Left Tackle Is on Injured Reserve. The Replacements Are Named Wollschlaeger and Herron.

The Saints' offensive line depth chart at tackle reads like a waiver-wire fever dream: Alex Wollschlaeger first, Alan Herron second, and nobody meaningful behind them. That is the inheritance of Kelvin Banks Jr.'s ankle injury — not just the loss of a starting left tackle, but the exposure of a position group that was already threadbare before he went down. Banks is on injured reserve. The season continues without him. And New Orleans is left asking two journeymen to protect a $132 million investment on every passing snap.

I have been tracking this collapse since training camp, and the throughline is consistent: the Saints built their 2026 offense around the assumption that the pieces would stay intact. Olave locked in at $132 million. Kamara back for a tenth season. Travis Etienne added to complement the run game. The logic was sound — continuity at skill positions, stability up front, and Spencer Rattler given enough structure to grow into the job. Banks was the load-bearing wall on the left side of that structure. He is gone, and what the depth chart reveals is that there was no contingency plan.

Consider what this means for Rattler specifically. Through nine games last season, he threw for 1,586 yards, eight touchdowns, and five interceptions — numbers that suggest a quarterback still finding his footing, still needing time and protection to make the right read. Left tackle is the position that buys quarterbacks that time. It is the blind-side guardian, the job that keeps a right-handed passer from getting hit before he can see the rush coming. Wollschlaeger and Herron are not that. They are depth options pressed into starting roles, and the difference between a competent starter and an overmatched backup at left tackle shows up not in the good plays but in the disasters — the strip sacks, the pressure-induced interceptions, the rhythm-killing hits that turn a developing quarterback into a panicked one.

The broader context makes this worse. Andrus Peat, who made three Pro Bowls and understood how to anchor an offensive line through turbulence, retired before the season started. That loss was absorbed quietly, but it mattered. Now Banks is gone too, and what remains at the tackle position is Wollschlaeger at the top of the depth chart — a name that should not be appearing in a column about a team trying to protect a nine-figure receiver investment. The Saints did not just lose a player. They lost the left side of their protection scheme with no credible replacement waiting.

My declaration is this: New Orleans cannot run the offense it designed around Chris Olave without solving the left tackle problem, and the current depth chart does not solve it. Kamara is active and healthy again, which matters — his presence in the backfield gives Rattler a release valve and keeps defenses from teeing off with pure pass rush. Olave himself is active and producing at the level that justified his contract. The skill talent is real. But skill talent requires a pocket, and the pocket just lost its most important brick. The Saints will find out, probably sooner than they want to, exactly how much protection matters when it disappears.