Not much positive........
 

Not much positive in Saints 27-12 loss to Niners
11:39 PM CDT on Saturday, August 23, 2003

WWLTV.com


Deuce McAllister and Michael Lewis will be no worries for the Saints in the coming season, but Saturday’s performance against the 49ers suggested just about every other area is a cause for some concern as San Francisco beat the Saints 27-12.


McAllister ran as if in midseason form, gaining 74 yards on 15 carries and catching three passes for 20 more. He also had a nice 24-yard gain called back by penalty. As for Lewis, after two returns of over 40 yards, the Niners elected to squib the ball on the ensuing kickoff.




WWL-TV
Deuce McAllister gets loose on one of several nice plays Saturday night
However, in the first half, when most of the first teamers played, the Niners nearly doubled the Saints offensive yardage output.


The Saints defense seemed to be challenged again as the combination of 49er quarterbacks Jeff Garcia, Tim Rattay and Ken Dorsey hit on 22 of 25 passes on the evening for 264 yards and one touchdown. The Niners scored three touchdowns in the second quarter on drives of 52, 64 and 80 yards to take a 20-9 halftime lead.


“I think it’s the little things,� said cornerback Ashley Ambrose of the defense’s continuing struggles. “I think we stepped back a little bit from last week, but it’s because of the little things.�


The Saints could only add a field goal in the second half, and the starters, despite playing almost three quarters, could only manage 12 points. Aaron Brooks hit 14 of 20 passes for 118 yards and an 18-yard laser scoring pass to Joe Horn. But Brooks missed badly on a few key third down pass plays that cost the team scoring opportunities. His backup, Todd Bouman fared even worse by hitting only 3 of 8 passes and having one picked off.


“We were able to move the ball up and down the field but we couldn’t get points,� said receiver Jerome Pathon. “It’s preseason, so we weren’t showing much of what we could do, but we had the opportunities and we kept missing them.�


I think these two paragraphs pretty much say it all.

Not much positive........
 

Aaron completed 70% of his passes last night while being uder a lot of pressure from the defense. He has yet to throw an interception in the preseason and his completion percentage is over 60% for the preseason.

I\'m not making this up. Really!!

Does he get no love from the Brooks bashing crew?

Not much positive........
 

Nope - he does not. And after reading those two paragraphs that\'s what you bring up? How can you not talk about how screwed we are right now...

and if you want total honesty - the thing that stood out to me most was \"But Brooks missed badly on a few key third down pass plays that cost the team scoring opportunities.\"

Not much positive........
 

Here are some positive things that I saw in the game last night.

Zach Hilton looks very impressive and should be a great weapon.

Dale Carter looks good and I\'m sure he will get better, cosidering this was his first action of the season.

Kenny Smith has been the most impressive on defense period. He\'s done it against first, second, and thrid sting offenses.

Grady Jackson has been living up to expectations.

Aaron Brooks has looked very good- Pay no attention to the Brooks haters-

Defensive Line has shut down the run-which was the major problem last year.

Duece looks like he\'s ready to win the rushing title this year.

Michael Lewis looks like he\'s going to take it to the house every time he touches the ball.

Ernie Conwell looks like a legit tightend.

Mel Mitchell has played pretty good and should get better.

Derrick Rodgers looks like an upgrade.

Johnathan Sullivan is starting to come on.

Charles Grant and Darren Howard will get their sacks this year.

See- it\'s not all bad. We just need to get the secondary to step up.

Not much positive........
 

I don\'t care if he completes 100% between the 20\'s... Completion percentage doesn\'t win games. I want to see more compleions in the red zone. I want touch downs... Until I see those... Nope, no love.

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Predicting Billy\'s next post: At the end of last season you all said: \"Yeah, okay, he threw for all those touchdowns. But his completion percentage was killing us.\" Now he has a good completion rate and all you say is: \"Completion percentage doesn\'t win games. I want TDs.\" No fair! [end of post] And he has a point.
But statistics are statistics. What I really wanted to see from Brooks and the offensive unit is that they worked on some of the things he couldn\'t do last year (screen pass) - no, have to wait for 2004. He took some time on some of his throws to go through all of his options instead of forcing the ball into double coverage.
Our red zone offense should be good (WILL be good). Once Deuce smells the end zone he\'s a beast and Conwell is an added target where it counts.
Bash Brooks when he has actually lost a game for us, not when he has done okay in a pre-season game. That way it might sound more convincing.

Not much positive........
 

you all need to read the last paragraph...........all saint players are starting to say this in one way or another, but pathon says it clear as did grant.........\"we were\'nt showing much of what we could do\" the opportunities were there.....no hands are really being show and although this disappoints me, i think they\'ll have more than enough to show come the opener......is there a line out this early and what is the online bookie you register with to take bets? i will bet the opener heavy if the spread is within 3 or so..smitty

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i can\'t believe i actually agree with cloner and billy, what do you haters want? i can\'t think of a game that AB cost us, ever, even without duece last year AB put enough points to win games if we hadn\'t had a D that looks like swiss cheese

brooks looks greatly improved in the decision making dept which as far as i was concerned was his only drawback, in the eagles game ho wmany passes were dropped by donte and jerome? then last night he has to play in the wind swirling toilet bowl known as candlestick 3com whatever you call that dump?

the AB haters are going to find anything to bash him with even if it\'s just the color of his socks, you won\'t change their minds, at least not until december :P

if you guys wanna bash someone why not pick any guy on defense, cuz they all look like crap

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

we\'re a deep pass/pound deuce team

Not much positive........
 

Good positive post Billy. After last nights game doom&gloom was just too easy.

Positives: Almost all the offseason moves we made look like they are upgrades.
Negatives: They may not prove it till week 4.

We look like a defense with 7 new starters in their 3rd pre-season game.

If I were Haslett I\'d play my starting defense the entire game against Miami. The only thing they lack is gelling time. They won\'t get it watching the reserves from the sideline. If they can\'t get it together soon, Matt Hasselback and Shaun Alexander may set several new NFL records.

Not much positive........
 

First off, I\'m not bashing Brooks by using this but questioning your arguements:
Funny how San Fran QB\'s went 24/26 in this same environment?

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.

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

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.

Not much positive........
 

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]

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.

Not much positive........
 

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:

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

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]

Not much positive........
 

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.

Not much positive........
 

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:
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 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.