Yes Strief practiced fully today and will be ready. I don't know if he would be starting if Brown had not gotten injured, even though he played horrible. Strief has outplayed several sumos throughout his career only to see the bench once they get healthy. He should have been starting at LT over Bushrod and Jamaal Brown when he was still a starter. He did a better job every time he had to fill in but always wound up back on the bench. Then they decided to have a lot of power formations in 2009 with both Strief and Bushrod on the same side, they would throw it quite a bit out of these formations and caught teams off guard, part of their success and going to the Superbowl.
Maybe they should think about finding some White guards with the recent success De la Puente, the "pro bowl" guards have been doing terrible. I am sure there are White guys sitting on the bench somewhere that can outplay them, just like De la Puente outplayed Kreutz.
They signed White receiver Andy Tanner. I hope they plan on using him in the future because none of the other receivers were getting separation, and Brees doesn't need his receivers to get that much separation, just a little bit since he is so accurate. He has made Lance Moore look good who imo is a poorer version of Mike Hass. Just think what Hass could be doing with Brees as his receiver. All Brees asks is for his receivers to run great routes, know the playbook inside and out, get the tiniest bit of separation and catch the ball. The team doesn't have a true number 1 receiver on the team and he still does well.