Should Levi Brown Switch Sides for Lefty Matt Leinart? - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

The quarterback is the most important player in football, and over the last quarter century, the player who protects the quarterback's blind side has become, in the eyes of many analysts, the second-most important player. They're even writing books about that.

Most of the time, the quarterback is right-handed, and that means a left tackle is protecting his blind side. But with left-handed quarterbacks, it's the right tackle who protects the blind side. And that brings us to the Arizona Cardinals, who drafted their quarterback of the future, Matt Leinart, last year, and their tackle of the future, Levi Brown, yesterday.

Leinart is a lefty. Brown played left tackle at Penn State, but he said he'll have no problem switching to right tackle to protect the blind side of the left-handed Leinart.

I suppose that's a good idea, but I do think it's a bigger transition from left tackle to right tackle than most people realize. There's a reason teams don't switch their left and right tackles if they switch in the middle of the season between a right-handed quarterback and a left-handed quarterback: The footwork is totally different, and that's something Brown is going to have to learn.

And that's why you might argue that Brown would be better off staying on the left side when he gets to the pros. It's a huge transition from the Big Ten to the NFL, and switching sides will make the transition a bit tougher.