stockman311

You want the best reason why our defense stinks ? I have the answer. It's called the draft my friends.
Lets take a little jaunt down memory lane and I will show you why we are 0-4 right now.

2002

At number 13 we select Donte Stallworth (No longer with the team). Two slots later Albert Haynesworth gets snapped up. Yes the same Albert Haynesworth that just demolished our OLine agains Tennessee last week. You think Albert might be an improvement over Brian Young or Hollis Thomas? That was rhetorical don't answer it.

To make matters worse Ed Reed was picked 11 spots later by the Ravens. You think our secondary would be giving up all of these big plays with Ed back there? I don't think so.

2003 (PoopDraft 2003)

I think you all remember Sullivan (no longer with the team) right? Number 6 pick right? Waste of life and space on planet earth right? Well look at the murderers row that went in the next ten picks:

Kevin Williams - would have looked nice next to Albert
Terrell Suggs - No need to take Will Smith after this pick
Marcus Trufant - Do we even have a CB on this team right now. (This was who I wanted at the time just for full disclosure)
Troy Polamalu - I also like him before the draft, I wonder why.

Anyway after the 1st round killer that was Jonathan Sullivan we follow it up by drafting

John Stinchcomb or as many of us like to call him (Stinky) in the second round and pass on these guys a couple of picks later:

E.J. Henderson
Ken Hamlin
Osi Umenyura

Seeing a trend yet?

How about 2005?

We take Jammal Brown. Not a bad pick but if you look at the two guys that went ahead of him: Shawne Merriman and DeMarcus Ware it looks like bad luck might also be part of the recipe.

2006

We have Duece. Bush falls in our laps inexplicably and we take him instead of AJ Hawk. Who's to say how this one will turn out in the end but it looks a lot less lopsided now then it did on draft day.

Finally our most recent disaster:

2007

Armed with the most prolific offense in the NFL the Saints pick: Robert Meachum (Still on the team somehow) and pass on Paul Posluzny who goes a couple of picks later.


Here is my point. With a little luck and/or non boneheaded drafting skills here is the list of the Saints Defense as it should be.

Charles Grant
Kevin Williams
Albert Hanyesworth
Will Smith
E.J. Henderson
AJ Hawk
Paul Posluszny

Do you think anyone would fear that front seven? Would it even matter who we had in the secondary with that front seven?

Here's what we have now: No Stallworth, No Sullivan, Stinchcomb sucks, Bush is a glorified third down back, Robert Meachum rides the pine, Jammal Brown is getting his jock beat off, and our entire defense blows.

I will now jump out of my office window.

Euphoria

Oh here I go again...

Just want to clarify... D is not the only reason we are 0-4.

But you are on the mark with everything else.

WhoDat205

To make you feel a little better: AZ got Calvin Pace and Bryant Johnson with the the two sullivan picks. If you want to look at it a different way, we unloaded the ricky time-bomb for Sulli and basically broke even.

Nope...still don't feel any better.

hagan714

Euphoria you are right and Stockman you are right. A lot of talent has slipped pass us in the draft and we are an old defensive unit because of it. Man o man have we hammered Haz and the choices he has made on defense. Some were good true but for the most part he was bad, I mean Bad at choices outside of round 1. Even in round one he was less than 50%.

Euphoria

I think if you can gets some big name key role players via FA's to play for you... you need to draft the biggest and best linemen on both sides of the ball. Players aren't dumb (maybe I need to re-word those 3 words), If you are a top CB and you see you got pressure happening from you linemen causing bad and rushed passes he might be able to snag a good bit of INT's.

If you are a QB, WR, RB... you see an Oline being build - ya tend to thing ahhh good I'll have blocking and protection.

I just don't see the opposite being true at all unless they just want a fat check to be myseriable.

MatthewT

Well, that front 7 that stockman stated would be pretty darn good. When it comes to the draft, teams have to get lucky. It's always easy to say if we would have just drafted this guy instead of that guy. The entire draft process is nothing more than a crap shot. There was no real reason to believe at the time the Saints made their picks that a lot of these guys would not pan out. Teams do their homework on prospects and until they are at the pro level, who really knows. Dallas built a dynasty through the draft during their 90's run. They also had a ton of picks during that time. As much as was said about Jimmy Johnson being a great talent evaluator, was he really that great? I would say the percentages went into his favor because of the amount of picks he had. He simply had enough picks to beat the odds. That feat was not duplicated when he went to Miami. He simply did not have a guy that could land him so much in a trade like Herschell Walker did, and later like Steve Walsh did.

FireVenturi

they say first round busts set your franchise back three years, looks like thats happening!