Not much positive........

lumm0x · 08-24-2003, 05:59 PM

First off, I\'m not bashing Brooks by using this but questioning your arguements:

then last night he has to play in the wind swirling toilet bowl known as candlestick 3com whatever you call that dump?

Funny how San Fran QB\'s went 24/26 in this same environment?

and who cares if can\'t run a screen pass, our offense doen\'t really rely on that type of play anyway

It would be a great addition to our play book. Since we have such a great vertical passing game, what better way to stop a defense from going nickel and dime than the odd screen. Any chance to make the secondary have to tackle Deuce rather than DL and LBers would be of great benefit as the game goes on. The screen would keep alot of our WR\'s out of double coverage if the safeties had to watch for the screen, and it would slow the pass rush and keep blitzes off Brooks. I know we don\'t rely on this type of play, but it never hurts to be able to effectively have some back-up options should our normal playbook be failing in a game.

By the way, Brooks has looked better in the preseason and seems to be healthy. I\'m eager to see him in two weeks and see how the offense opens it up against Seattle.

rusta · 08-24-2003, 06:35 PM

SF had homefield, they\'re used to that mess

plus AB and Garcia/Rattay are two differant style of QB, granted rattay did air it out a little last night neither garcia nor rattay are deep ball guys like AB

even the announcers last night were joking about how bad the wind was

FWtex · 08-24-2003, 06:55 PM

Despite what some excuse makers want to say on here there does not appear to be much in the way of positives from this preseason. Some say the saints have been playing vanilla all 3 games ... How do you know this? Are you in on the game planning seesions? If this is so then I am even more worried about the coaching philosophy for not seeing where the team really is performance wise. How can they know where improvements need to be made if they only throw out the \"good stuff\" during practice.

I am not buying it. Haz has made this entire organization a bunch of excuse makers. I believed the hype in the offseson but my eyes don\'t lie to me. The words coming out of airline Dr. do not match what we see on the field. If they don\'t try it during preseason then how the heck are they (and some of you folks) going to know it will work in the regular season. Is the team secretly practicing against another team?

It comes down to this. The defense did not play well last year and the defense has only been playing vanilla this preseason. They have nothing to go by to tell themselves they are going to be any better.

The offense is out of whack and I don\'t know whose fault that is right now. They have not scored a TD against a #1 defense and they played like crap at the end of last year. Oh I guess they are so damn good they will just go out in the first game and know exactly how to score a TD once they get in the red Zone. The excuse we hear for this is the same \"we don\'t want to show our stuff\". This is bull crapola. I gues the saints coaching staff has come up with the most high tech offensive plays in the offseason that no other team has ever seen. Fact will be seen that they will run the same plays they did last year. And why is it this saints team is the only NFL team worried about keeping its offense and defense top secret? No other playoff contending team is having problems scoring TD\'s with \"their\" vanilla Game plans.

I usually do not put any weight on preseason play either but I have never seen anything like what I am seeing from the group this year. When you hear anything coming out of the saints it is always positive. This concerns me that they are lying to themselves. I want a coulda, shoulda, woulda press conference coming out of Airline Drive.

BillyCarpenter1 · 08-24-2003, 07:40 PM

San Francisco scored the gameÃƒÂ¢Ã¢Â‚Â¬Ã¢Â„Â¢s first touchdown in the second quarter to take a 7-3 lead. The six play, 54 yard drive was aided by a pass interference call on Derrick Rogers, which moved the ball to the Saints 15-yard line.

The Saints defense actually kept the 49\'ers off the score board in the first quarter. The 49\'ers first scoring drive started on their own 46 yd. line and they were aided by a 20yd pass interference call.

After that is when the 49\'ers backups entered the game and the Saints defense actually played worse against them.

Fred Thomas was responsible for giving up some very big plays last night. On one drive alone he was beaten badly for a 20yd gain and a couple of plays later he allowed the receiver to catch the ball easily in the endzone.

For the first 2 series the Saints defense looked good. On the 3rd series, although they gave up a TD, they didn\'t look bad. Really!!

After last night I was very disappointed but after a cooling off period I have come back to reality. The reality is that this is preseason ,and while the 3rd game is the preseason game that the starters should look their best, it doesn\'t always work out like that.

I think there is no way that when they start putting pressure on the QB and put their defensive scheme in, that I think teams continue to pick apart the defense like they have done in the preseason.

I admit we appear to have some problems but I think some of you have completely given up on the defense before the first game. Rememeber who you are and I want to see you back here after the first REAL GAME!!

Where are all the folks that were preaching to me that the scheme is more important than just lining up the players and letting them make plays? And for the record: I never said the scheme wasn\'t important!!

[Edited on 24/8/2003 by BillyCarpenter1]

[Edited on 24/8/2003 by BillyCarpenter1]

WhoDat · 08-24-2003, 10:14 PM

\"Positives: Almost all the offseason moves we made look like they are upgrades.\"

WHOA - hold on. I\'m just thinking defense here, but let\'s consider:

Rodgers - big upgrade, the guy\'s a stud.

Smith/Ruff - backup linebacker who couldn\'t overtake Clemons for the starting job and a guy whose best year ever doesn\'t come close to Clemons year LAST YEAR. Giant downgrade at the spot we needed help most.

Allen/Hodge - No comment yet.

Sullivan - Little to say yet. He\'s big and strong, but I need to see that transform in to good play on the field.

CB - all just a year older - that means slower. Keyuo Craver will be starting by year end - at least he\'ll be around for more than the next two years.

Safeties - Tebucky Jones SHOULD be an upgrade over Bellamy, but thus far he hasn\'t done much to impress me. Mitchell is no where even remotely close to the player Sammy Knight is, RIGHT NOW.

Upgrade? No, I say downgrade. We are worse right now then we were at this time last year. Hopefully by year end we\'ll have our sh-t together, but right now we suck.

BillyCarpenter1 · 08-24-2003, 10:28 PM

\"Positives: Almost all the offseason moves we made look like they are upgrades.\"

WHOA - hold on. I\'m just thinking defense here, but let\'s consider:

Rodgers - big upgrade, the guy\'s a stud.

Smith/Ruff - backup linebacker who couldn\'t overtake Clemons for the starting job and a guy whose best year ever doesn\'t come close to Clemons year LAST YEAR. Giant downgrade at the spot we needed help most.

Allen/Hodge - No comment yet.

Sullivan - Little to say yet. He\'s big and strong, but I need to see that transform in to good play on the field.

CB - all just a year older - that means slower. Keyuo Craver will be starting by year end - at least he\'ll be around for more than the next two years.

Safeties - Tebucky Jones SHOULD be an upgrade over Bellamy, but thus far he hasn\'t done much to impress me. Mitchell is no where even remotely close to the player Sammy Knight is, RIGHT NOW.

Upgrade? No, I say downgrade. We are worse right now then we were at this time last year. Hopefully by year end we\'ll have our sh-t together, but right now we suck.

WhoDat,

First of all, I like reading your posts and I understand where your coming from-BUT-your making it out to be much worse than it\'s probably going to be.

You, as well as I, know anyone can make anything sound as good or bad as you want it to. You have stated some things that are not true. Such as:

CB - all just a year older - that means slower.

Beleive it or not, just because another year has passed does not mean a player is slower.

We are worse right now then we were at this time last year.

Wrong again. Statistically we are better than we were at this point last year. Yep, that\'s right.

Now, I know it\'s easy to be down on the defense right now, but the whole complex of the game changes once the regular season starts and things could be much better or they could be much worse. IMO- you are jumping the gun--

[Edited on 25/8/2003 by BillyCarpenter1]

tweeky · 08-24-2003, 11:23 PM

Smith/Ruff - Giant downgrade at the spot we needed help most.

No way is this a \"Giant\" downgrade. Clemmons sucked last year. Of course its a little hard to verify since he was mostly pancaked on his back as RB\'s trampled over him.
While Smith/Ruff/Grant may not look like a significant upgrade, its certainly not a giant downgrade from the Turnstile Clemmons. If they retire his Saint jersey, it should have cleat marks on the front.

Mitchell is no where even remotely close to the player Sammy Knight is, RIGHT NOW.

I think he\'s been one of the bright spots. I think he\'s already better than Sammy Knight right now. I\'d hate to see how bad we\'d be if 5-Second-Sammy was back there. Of course you\'d see a lot more of him, as he was chasing WR\'s into the endzone on espn highlights. It would be hilarious to see our defensive linemen passing up Knight chasing WR\'s into the endzone. Hmmm, is it illegal for a DL to push a safety in the back to get him out of the way?

Of couse, what does Sammy care, he landed that mega-contract from Miami when he voided the last year of his Saints contract, No wait... ahh nevermind. We\'ve been down this road called league minimum too many times before.

lumm0x · 08-25-2003, 07:09 PM

Where are all the folks that were preaching to me that the scheme is more important than just lining up the players and letting them make plays? And for the record: I never said the scheme wasn\'t important!!

This was likely aimed at me, and just goes to add to the point. A scheme can make a good player look great and a great player Hall of Fame. Just lining up the players like you said can expose them for what they truly are. I agree we have been vanilla on D in the preseason. No blitzing, no disguised coverages, no stunting...and guess what....we look weak. Perhaps if they had added dimensions to the defense it would not be so blatantly ugly. Perhaps some blitzes would have helped the coverage and forced turnovers, or some stunts would have let a lineman beat the blocks. We\'ll never know until the incorporate them. Until then our defense that just lined up and made individual efforts lost the battles.

I agree with this post:

In preseason, you offense must execute the bread and butter plays of the offense. They usually don\'t game plan so they don\'t run scripted playes that they normally would to target a defenses weakness. Yes, they do run some scripted plays, but they\'re there to see what our offense can do. And find a rythm with the basic plays.

Same on defense. You let the individuals make plays in the same environment. You don\'t want to see the scheme being responsible for the success. You need to evaluate the individual effort and see how a player sheds a block and makes a play, or gets a jump on the ball to break up a route. How a lineman closes the gap and forces the ballcarrier to the pursuit. That is why defenses use schemeless raw style in preseason, to evaluate the new players. This must be scary for Venturi and Haslett to watch.

I admit we appear to have some problems but I think some of you have completely given up on the defense before the first game. Rememeber who you are and I want to see you back here after the first REAL GAME!!

I sure hope to be here eating crow for the fantastci job they did to prepare for the Seahawks. I\'d like to see some progress against Miami that makes me optimistic it will happen. I haven\'t written the defense off. They are talented individuals. Hopefully the Miami game is a wakening for fundamental football and the Seattle game a chance for the defensive speed to be utilized in an effective scheme to neutralize the Seattle offense. Believe me....I\'ll be screaming my a$$ off at that TV and getting the neighbors to call the cops again.

08-24-2003, 05:59 PM	#11
lumm0x Resident antediluvian Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,026	Not much positive........ First off, I\'m not bashing Brooks by using this but questioning your arguements: then last night he has to play in the wind swirling toilet bowl known as candlestick 3com whatever you call that dump? Funny how San Fran QB\'s went 24/26 in this same environment? and who cares if can\'t run a screen pass, our offense doen\'t really rely on that type of play anyway It would be a great addition to our play book. Since we have such a great vertical passing game, what better way to stop a defense from going nickel and dime than the odd screen. Any chance to make the secondary have to tackle Deuce rather than DL and LBers would be of great benefit as the game goes on. The screen would keep alot of our WR\'s out of double coverage if the safeties had to watch for the screen, and it would slow the pass rush and keep blitzes off Brooks. I know we don\'t rely on this type of play, but it never hurts to be able to effectively have some back-up options should our normal playbook be failing in a game. By the way, Brooks has looked better in the preseason and seems to be healthy. I\'m eager to see him in two weeks and see how the offense opens it up against Seattle.

08-24-2003, 06:35 PM	#12
rusta 100th Post Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 361	Not much positive........ SF had homefield, they\'re used to that mess plus AB and Garcia/Rattay are two differant style of QB, granted rattay did air it out a little last night neither garcia nor rattay are deep ball guys like AB even the announcers last night were joking about how bad the wind was
rusta 100th Post Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 361

08-24-2003, 06:55 PM	#13
FWtex 100th Post Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 370	Not much positive........ Despite what some excuse makers want to say on here there does not appear to be much in the way of positives from this preseason. Some say the saints have been playing vanilla all 3 games ... How do you know this? Are you in on the game planning seesions? If this is so then I am even more worried about the coaching philosophy for not seeing where the team really is performance wise. How can they know where improvements need to be made if they only throw out the \"good stuff\" during practice. I am not buying it. Haz has made this entire organization a bunch of excuse makers. I believed the hype in the offseson but my eyes don\'t lie to me. The words coming out of airline Dr. do not match what we see on the field. If they don\'t try it during preseason then how the heck are they (and some of you folks) going to know it will work in the regular season. Is the team secretly practicing against another team? It comes down to this. The defense did not play well last year and the defense has only been playing vanilla this preseason. They have nothing to go by to tell themselves they are going to be any better. The offense is out of whack and I don\'t know whose fault that is right now. They have not scored a TD against a #1 defense and they played like crap at the end of last year. Oh I guess they are so damn good they will just go out in the first game and know exactly how to score a TD once they get in the red Zone. The excuse we hear for this is the same \"we don\'t want to show our stuff\". This is bull crapola. I gues the saints coaching staff has come up with the most high tech offensive plays in the offseason that no other team has ever seen. Fact will be seen that they will run the same plays they did last year. And why is it this saints team is the only NFL team worried about keeping its offense and defense top secret? No other playoff contending team is having problems scoring TD\'s with \"their\" vanilla Game plans. I usually do not put any weight on preseason play either but I have never seen anything like what I am seeing from the group this year. When you hear anything coming out of the saints it is always positive. This concerns me that they are lying to themselves. I want a coulda, shoulda, woulda press conference coming out of Airline Drive.
FWtex 100th Post Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 370

08-24-2003, 07:40 PM	#14
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209	Not much positive........ San Francisco scored the gameÃƒÂ¢Ã¢Â‚Â¬Ã¢Â„Â¢s first touchdown in the second quarter to take a 7-3 lead. The six play, 54 yard drive was aided by a pass interference call on Derrick Rogers, which moved the ball to the Saints 15-yard line. The Saints defense actually kept the 49\'ers off the score board in the first quarter. The 49\'ers first scoring drive started on their own 46 yd. line and they were aided by a 20yd pass interference call. After that is when the 49\'ers backups entered the game and the Saints defense actually played worse against them. Fred Thomas was responsible for giving up some very big plays last night. On one drive alone he was beaten badly for a 20yd gain and a couple of plays later he allowed the receiver to catch the ball easily in the endzone. For the first 2 series the Saints defense looked good. On the 3rd series, although they gave up a TD, they didn\'t look bad. Really!! After last night I was very disappointed but after a cooling off period I have come back to reality. The reality is that this is preseason ,and while the 3rd game is the preseason game that the starters should look their best, it doesn\'t always work out like that. I think there is no way that when they start putting pressure on the QB and put their defensive scheme in, that I think teams continue to pick apart the defense like they have done in the preseason. I admit we appear to have some problems but I think some of you have completely given up on the defense before the first game. Rememeber who you are and I want to see you back here after the first REAL GAME!! Where are all the folks that were preaching to me that the scheme is more important than just lining up the players and letting them make plays? And for the record: I never said the scheme wasn\'t important!! [Edited on 24/8/2003 by BillyCarpenter1] [Edited on 24/8/2003 by BillyCarpenter1]
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209

08-24-2003, 10:14 PM	#15
WhoDat 5000 POSTS! + Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 5,631	Not much positive........ \"Positives: Almost all the offseason moves we made look like they are upgrades.\" WHOA - hold on. I\'m just thinking defense here, but let\'s consider: Rodgers - big upgrade, the guy\'s a stud. Smith/Ruff - backup linebacker who couldn\'t overtake Clemons for the starting job and a guy whose best year ever doesn\'t come close to Clemons year LAST YEAR. Giant downgrade at the spot we needed help most. Allen/Hodge - No comment yet. Sullivan - Little to say yet. He\'s big and strong, but I need to see that transform in to good play on the field. CB - all just a year older - that means slower. Keyuo Craver will be starting by year end - at least he\'ll be around for more than the next two years. Safeties - Tebucky Jones SHOULD be an upgrade over Bellamy, but thus far he hasn\'t done much to impress me. Mitchell is no where even remotely close to the player Sammy Knight is, RIGHT NOW. Upgrade? No, I say downgrade. We are worse right now then we were at this time last year. Hopefully by year end we\'ll have our sh-t together, but right now we suck.
WhoDat 5000 POSTS! + Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 5,631	\"Excuses, excuses, excuses. ThatÃ¢Â€Â™s all anyone ever makes for the New Orleans SaintsÃ¢Â€Â™ organization.\" - Eric Narcisse \"Being a Saints fan is almost like being addicted to crack,\" he said.[i]\"You know you should stop, but you just can\'t.\"

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08-24-2003, 10:28 PM	#16
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209	Not much positive........ \"Positives: Almost all the offseason moves we made look like they are upgrades.\" WHOA - hold on. I\'m just thinking defense here, but let\'s consider: Rodgers - big upgrade, the guy\'s a stud. Smith/Ruff - backup linebacker who couldn\'t overtake Clemons for the starting job and a guy whose best year ever doesn\'t come close to Clemons year LAST YEAR. Giant downgrade at the spot we needed help most. Allen/Hodge - No comment yet. Sullivan - Little to say yet. He\'s big and strong, but I need to see that transform in to good play on the field. CB - all just a year older - that means slower. Keyuo Craver will be starting by year end - at least he\'ll be around for more than the next two years. Safeties - Tebucky Jones SHOULD be an upgrade over Bellamy, but thus far he hasn\'t done much to impress me. Mitchell is no where even remotely close to the player Sammy Knight is, RIGHT NOW. Upgrade? No, I say downgrade. We are worse right now then we were at this time last year. Hopefully by year end we\'ll have our sh-t together, but right now we suck. WhoDat, First of all, I like reading your posts and I understand where your coming from-BUT-your making it out to be much worse than it\'s probably going to be. You, as well as I, know anyone can make anything sound as good or bad as you want it to. You have stated some things that are not true. Such as: CB - all just a year older - that means slower. Beleive it or not, just because another year has passed does not mean a player is slower. We are worse right now then we were at this time last year. Wrong again. Statistically we are better than we were at this point last year. Yep, that\'s right. Now, I know it\'s easy to be down on the defense right now, but the whole complex of the game changes once the regular season starts and things could be much better or they could be much worse. IMO- you are jumping the gun-- [Edited on 25/8/2003 by BillyCarpenter1]
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209

08-24-2003, 11:23 PM	#17
tweeky 500th Post Join Date: May 2003 Location: South Alabama Posts: 779	Not much positive........ Smith/Ruff - Giant downgrade at the spot we needed help most. No way is this a \"Giant\" downgrade. Clemmons sucked last year. Of course its a little hard to verify since he was mostly pancaked on his back as RB\'s trampled over him. While Smith/Ruff/Grant may not look like a significant upgrade, its certainly not a giant downgrade from the Turnstile Clemmons. If they retire his Saint jersey, it should have cleat marks on the front. Mitchell is no where even remotely close to the player Sammy Knight is, RIGHT NOW. I think he\'s been one of the bright spots. I think he\'s already better than Sammy Knight right now. I\'d hate to see how bad we\'d be if 5-Second-Sammy was back there. Of course you\'d see a lot more of him, as he was chasing WR\'s into the endzone on espn highlights. It would be hilarious to see our defensive linemen passing up Knight chasing WR\'s into the endzone. Hmmm, is it illegal for a DL to push a safety in the back to get him out of the way? Of couse, what does Sammy care, he landed that mega-contract from Miami when he voided the last year of his Saints contract, No wait... ahh nevermind. We\'ve been down this road called league minimum too many times before.
	Whether we agree or disagree; its all for Him.

08-25-2003, 07:09 PM	#18
lumm0x Resident antediluvian Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,026	Not much positive........ Where are all the folks that were preaching to me that the scheme is more important than just lining up the players and letting them make plays? And for the record: I never said the scheme wasn\'t important!! This was likely aimed at me, and just goes to add to the point. A scheme can make a good player look great and a great player Hall of Fame. Just lining up the players like you said can expose them for what they truly are. I agree we have been vanilla on D in the preseason. No blitzing, no disguised coverages, no stunting...and guess what....we look weak. Perhaps if they had added dimensions to the defense it would not be so blatantly ugly. Perhaps some blitzes would have helped the coverage and forced turnovers, or some stunts would have let a lineman beat the blocks. We\'ll never know until the incorporate them. Until then our defense that just lined up and made individual efforts lost the battles. I agree with this post: In preseason, you offense must execute the bread and butter plays of the offense. They usually don\'t game plan so they don\'t run scripted playes that they normally would to target a defenses weakness. Yes, they do run some scripted plays, but they\'re there to see what our offense can do. And find a rythm with the basic plays. Same on defense. You let the individuals make plays in the same environment. You don\'t want to see the scheme being responsible for the success. You need to evaluate the individual effort and see how a player sheds a block and makes a play, or gets a jump on the ball to break up a route. How a lineman closes the gap and forces the ballcarrier to the pursuit. That is why defenses use schemeless raw style in preseason, to evaluate the new players. This must be scary for Venturi and Haslett to watch. I admit we appear to have some problems but I think some of you have completely given up on the defense before the first game. Rememeber who you are and I want to see you back here after the first REAL GAME!! I sure hope to be here eating crow for the fantastci job they did to prepare for the Seahawks. I\'d like to see some progress against Miami that makes me optimistic it will happen. I haven\'t written the defense off. They are talented individuals. Hopefully the Miami game is a wakening for fundamental football and the Seattle game a chance for the defensive speed to be utilized in an effective scheme to neutralize the Seattle offense. Believe me....I\'ll be screaming my a$$ off at that TV and getting the neighbors to call the cops again.