BTW almost all right tackles have problems with speed rushers, including the departed Todd Wade, and the guy we targeted John Tait. Its inherent in the kind of player teams generally look for at the position.
If they DIDN'T have problems with speed rushers and they were a supreme pass protector, they would be moved to the left side because that is the most important position on the offensive line.
This talk about Andrews at guard...I don't like it. I think he could be a great guard its just I view the guard position as basically a dime a dozen as far as road grating man-plows go. Great tackles are hard to come by and I've come to view the position as a lot, and I do mean a lot, more important to BOTH the passing game and the running game, than either guard position. Over these past 4 or 5 years is when I came to this conclusion. The value to the passing game is obvious. But when I look around the league, and looked at our own OL and running game situations the past 5 years or so, I just noticed that when you have a good tandem of tackles, the running game naturally follows. You should have seen the differences in Ricky's numbers from when Mark Dixon was in the game at LT and when Marcus Spriggs was in the game. Also there was a pronounced difference from 2000 where we had Richmond Webb still playing at a pretty high level for us, along with uber-rookie Todd Wade on the other side, to when we had Spencer Folau and Wade blocking the fringes in 2001.
This year the raw and undeveloped Wade Smith was tossed into the fire and lets face it, he looked raw and undeveloped and was a real weakness, and look how our running game suffered. Don't give me that "I think Wade Smith looked really good for a rookie!" stuff. We're talking absolute terms, not relative. He may have looked ALRIGHT for a rookie but in absolute terms he was probably the worst starting LT in the NFL. Its not his fault. Not even super high pick Jordan Gross was tossed into playing LT in his rookie year. No other team in the NFL had a rookie playing LT. We were IDIOTS to not grab some insurance policies in case Dixon got hurt as he always does....why do you think we've gone tackle crazy so far in FA grabbing McIntosh, St Clair, and now Randall?
Anyway the point is in our own experience when we've got a good SET of tackles, we run well. When we've got only ONE good tackle, we don't. In my experience it looks similar in the rest of the NFL. Find a good productive RB, and I'd be willing to bet more likely than not he's got a good set of tackles blocking for him.