Am I the only one?

BillyCarpenter1 · 09-09-2003, 07:11 AM

Am I the only one who saw anything positive about the game in Seattle? We all went into this game worried if the secondary would be as dismal as they looked in preseason. The high powered Seahawk passing attack was pretty much non-existant Sunday. Hasslebeck and the highly touted receivers had less than 150yds passing all day. Take away a couple of pass interference calls and they would have been shut completely down.

Seattle had a good day running the ball. I don't think they did spectacular on the ground. I think Alexandar ran for 107 yds and their other back had about 50yds.

If I would have told anyone before the game that the Saints would have turned the ball over 4-times and the defense would have kept Hasselbeck under 150yds passing and Alexander would have had 107 yds and they would score only 27-pts -- most of you would have told me I was crazy.

The defense did not play that bad and they are not the reason we lost the game. The biggest reason we lost the game was because of turnovers. While it is in vouge on this board to bash the QB and the coaches, if anyone wants to tell the truth -- then you cannot overlook the 4- turnovers.

There is no doubt that our offense struggled. A lot of that can be attributed to costly penalties at the most inopportune times. A holding call that turns a 3rd & 3 into a 3rd and 13. Add in the fact that the receivers dropped the ball all day long and it's little wonder why the offense is struggling.

What I'm saying is that the Seahawks didn't do anything special on offense or defense. What happend is the Saints beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and dropped passes. No one wants to lose but I came out of the game with the feeling that most of the mistakes that were made are easily correctable. Hopefully, the Saints offense will get back on track against Huston.

saint5221 · 09-09-2003, 08:17 AM

Billy you keep quoting the passing statistic as if it tells the story. The points on the board tell the story, the hawks had an effective day and scored. Much of the damage was done on the ground, remember how improved our run defense was supposed to be? Does\'nt Haslett say stopping the run is the most important thing to do? Our offensive ineptness contributed to a short field so the hawks didn\'t have to go far to put up points may times. To call the passing attack non-existant baised on that is missing he point. Sure the defense did\'nt give up much yards, there were not many yards to give up. You can pull out all the stats you want the Saints lost for good reasons and some of those reasons were on defense. The tackling was terrible again, they gave up big gains because of it. The fact is the defense may not of been the worst thing on the field Sunday they were far from good as well.

What I\'m saying is that the Seahawks didn\'t do anything special on offense or defense. What happend is the Saints beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and dropped passes. No one wants to lose but I came out of the game with the feeling that most of the mistakes that were made are easily correctable.

That is the problem, I don\'t find it so comforting to say the Saints beat themselves, that is always the mantra of losers. Every wek in the NFL the teams that win are the ones that do not make as many mistakes. The ones that lose comfort themselves by saying, we had chances, we did not excitue we we needed to, it\'s not like thay beat us we lost. Billy if these mistakes had only surfaced in just this one game I would call them easly correctable. These mistakes have been losing games for the Saints last year, all pre season, and now when they coun\'t. The span and consistancy of errors is getting a little to long for such blithe optimism. Penalities, turnovers, droped passes and missed tackles are what make bad teams bad. Every team can win if they don\'t do those things. Untill we find a way to not do those things we will lose and lose often. Does this staff know how to field a mentally tough team that will not shoot itself? We\'ll find out soon enough.

[Edited on 9/9/2003 by saint5221]

tweeky · 09-09-2003, 08:18 AM

I sort of agree. But good teams don\'t drop balls all day long, don\'t turn the ball over 4 times, don\'t commit pre-snap penalties on 3rd down and short.

If we can just stop doing what bad teams do, we can become a good team.

You\'re right, those are correctable mistakes, but we haven\'t corrected them in about 8 games.
I think everyones fear is that Haslet and company are incapable of correcting the little things on both sides of the ball.

Last nights game was encouraging because Philly looked a lot worse than we did and I\'ll bet nobody\'s calling for McNabb\'s head or predicting dom and gloom for the Eagles.

[Edited on 9/9/2003 by tweeky]

nocloning · 09-09-2003, 08:25 AM

First of all: 27 points is 27 points is 27 points is a lot. (Repeat after me)
Don\'t look at the stats, just look at what you saw on the field. They played ball control offense because that was all they needed to do. If the Saints would have taken the lead or shut down the run Hasselbeck would have thrown the ball downfield - and yes, I believe he would have torched our defensive backs for a TD or two, but that\'s not the point here. The point is our pass defense didn\'t look good just because they only gave up 137 yards. That\'s misleading, they weren\'t really taken to the test.

What I\'m saying is that the Seahawks didn\'t do anything special on offense or defense. What happend is the Saints beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and dropped passes.

Not exactly what I call positive. You say these errors are easily corrected. Maybe, but the question was if anyone saw something positive in the game in Seattle. \"We will probably look better next week\" is not something positive.
My three keys to victory were: Pass rush, turnovers and avoiding penalties. Sadly, I was right.

BillyCarpenter1 · 09-09-2003, 08:39 AM

Saints5221 -- I guess I did not get my point across. Here is my point: Turnovers, penalties, and dropped passes, cost us the game. I don\'t know why they happened. I do know Haslett and Venturi didn\'t do any of those things. How about let\'s forget last season and concentrate on THIS season. I\'m so sick of hearing about last season!! How many times are you guys going to beat that in the ground? Sure it may be relevant to the mistakes that happened against Seattle and maybe it\'s not. But, how many times do we need to hear this?

There was nothing wrong with the coaching or play calling. The offense put the defense into some positons where the Seahawks had a very short field. This has nothing to do with last year -- this has to do with holding on to the ball. It\'s really that simple. Nothing complicated about it.

The offense moved the ball up and down the field. The receivers dropped a lot of balls and the offense had way to many penalties that killed drives. Again, it\'s that simple.

Stat\'s do not tell the whole story and neither does comparing everything to last year. You don\'t turn the ball over 4 times, have 10 penalties for 110 yards and expect to win a game. Go ahead and blame the coaches if you want, but I don\'t get it.

BillyCarpenter1 · 09-09-2003, 08:49 AM

clone --

Not exactly what I call positive. You say these errors are easily corrected. Maybe, but the question was if anyone saw something positive in the game in Seattle

Seattle had 270 yards of total offense, 151 rushing and 119 passing. 3rd down efficiency 3-12, 2-4 in red zone efficency, and 2-3 in goaltogo situations. They were forced to punt 7 times. One of Seattle\'s scoring drives - 7 plays, 3 yards! The Seahawks scored three touchdowns on drives of 3, 23, and 38 yards.

That sounds postive for the defense. Sounds like turnovers cost us the game. Do you see nothing positive in there?

saint5221 · 09-09-2003, 09:26 AM

Of course there are positives there are always positives, the problem is the negatives out weigh the positives. As to forgeting last season, I hate to issue over used conventional wisdom ,but it does fit here, Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Looking at last year is very relevant in this case because the play is the same, there is a continuum here. It tells us the problems of last year have not been fixed. If you bury you head in the sand every thing looks fine, if you come up for air you\'ll see a few things to be concerned about. There is no maybe about it\'s relevance, it is directly relevant to the core of the issue, how and why the Saints lose games. Looking at one game, one season only, will never tell you the whole story, You have to look at everything, see how it all fits together.

Turnovers, penalties, and dropped passes, cost us the game. I don\'t know why they happened. I do know Haslett and Venturi didn\'t do any of those things.

I say they did. When a team exibits a pattern of mental errors and lack of focus, this is within the realm of the coaching staff and it\'s tone and focus set. Some teams always execute well and make few mistakes, some teams always struggle, even when the personel changes. Why do you think that is? Coaching. Billy you love stats, they help understand things but only in context. Mark Twain said there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The stats miss the truth here. If you want the truth there is one stat you can look at, 27-10

lumm0x · 09-09-2003, 09:44 AM

Billy, I\'ll agree that the defense should not shoulder the burden of the loss. But, they didn\'t play well. You\'ve quoted all sorts of stats to show that they were effective, but as you also mentioned, Seattle played with a short field because of the turnovers and thus, didn\'t have to march the length of the field to score. The fact that we gave up equal passing and rushing yards only means that Seattle was not forced to throw to beat us. We gave up 50 yards rushing to a veteran fullback? Many of Alexander and Strong\'s rush yards came in blatant rushing situations. The Saints D had 8-9 in the box and they blasted for big carries. Our DL was 1-2 yards back of the line of scrimmage on every running play.....moving backwards. Our LBers were trapped behind the DL and couldn\'t see the ball carrier squirt outside until it was too late. And then there was the hideous tackling....that spoke volumes for itself.
What bothers me the most was all of the \"pillow talk\" from the players and coaching staff about how we will see the true defense in Seattle, about how we will unleash the beast. We did absolutely nothing differnt defensively against Seattle than we did in preseason. In this I\'m not just talking about poor play, but poor scheming. We still have that sweet vanilla coating.

The defense was put in a bad position all day. That is the truth. They didn\'t shut down anything though. The fact that Seattle didn\'t have to do anything special to win the game is the scariest thought here.

Turnovers, penalties and dropped passes cost us this game. Agreed. Few defenses could have overcome this position and I would not have expected ours to, but to say they had a good showing is very courteous of you to not want to hurt their feelings.

BillyCarpenter1 · 09-09-2003, 09:54 AM

LummOX -- I never said the defense had a good showing. But, if it helps your post sound better, feel free to misquoute me all you want.

How do you figure the schemeing was bad? You just said we had eight in the box. Seattle did most of the damage running the ball. Maybe you would have put 10 in the box? What would you have done ole wise one?

Granted our denfense was not dominating and I didn\'t suggest that. What I said is that our defense did not cost us the game. They forced Seattle to punt 7- times and were put in bad situations. It\'s hard for most defenses to overcome that.

Everyone talks about Seattle running a ball control offense and using the clock up. Well, they lost in that attempt because we had the ball for 34 minutes despite our offense turning the ball over 4-times. Again, how do you explain that???

JOESAM2002 · 09-09-2003, 10:04 AM

Looks like we need to hire a jockey to beat this dead horse some more. I got one last question for you Billy. If the Saints had the ball for 34 minutes as you said. Doesn\'t that speak volumns about how inept they were? How many times on average does an offense touch the ball in a given game? Maybe 8 or 9? To have touched the ball 8 or 9 or even 10 times in this game and have 4 turnovers leaves the percentage pretty high wouldn\'t you say?

Everyone likes to use quotes on this board so much. Here\'s one for you.

\"Statistics are for losers.\" Seems to me the man that said that was a pretty good coach.
Vince Lombardi.

09-09-2003, 07:11 AM	#1
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209	Am I the only one? Am I the only one who saw anything positive about the game in Seattle? We all went into this game worried if the secondary would be as dismal as they looked in preseason. The high powered Seahawk passing attack was pretty much non-existant Sunday. Hasslebeck and the highly touted receivers had less than 150yds passing all day. Take away a couple of pass interference calls and they would have been shut completely down. Seattle had a good day running the ball. I don't think they did spectacular on the ground. I think Alexandar ran for 107 yds and their other back had about 50yds. If I would have told anyone before the game that the Saints would have turned the ball over 4-times and the defense would have kept Hasselbeck under 150yds passing and Alexander would have had 107 yds and they would score only 27-pts -- most of you would have told me I was crazy. The defense did not play that bad and they are not the reason we lost the game. The biggest reason we lost the game was because of turnovers. While it is in vouge on this board to bash the QB and the coaches, if anyone wants to tell the truth -- then you cannot overlook the 4- turnovers. There is no doubt that our offense struggled. A lot of that can be attributed to costly penalties at the most inopportune times. A holding call that turns a 3rd & 3 into a 3rd and 13. Add in the fact that the receivers dropped the ball all day long and it's little wonder why the offense is struggling. What I'm saying is that the Seahawks didn't do anything special on offense or defense. What happend is the Saints beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and dropped passes. No one wants to lose but I came out of the game with the feeling that most of the mistakes that were made are easily correctable. Hopefully, the Saints offense will get back on track against Huston.
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209

09-09-2003, 08:17 AM	#2
saint5221 500th Post Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 598	Am I the only one? Billy you keep quoting the passing statistic as if it tells the story. The points on the board tell the story, the hawks had an effective day and scored. Much of the damage was done on the ground, remember how improved our run defense was supposed to be? Does\'nt Haslett say stopping the run is the most important thing to do? Our offensive ineptness contributed to a short field so the hawks didn\'t have to go far to put up points may times. To call the passing attack non-existant baised on that is missing he point. Sure the defense did\'nt give up much yards, there were not many yards to give up. You can pull out all the stats you want the Saints lost for good reasons and some of those reasons were on defense. The tackling was terrible again, they gave up big gains because of it. The fact is the defense may not of been the worst thing on the field Sunday they were far from good as well. What I\'m saying is that the Seahawks didn\'t do anything special on offense or defense. What happend is the Saints beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and dropped passes. No one wants to lose but I came out of the game with the feeling that most of the mistakes that were made are easily correctable. That is the problem, I don\'t find it so comforting to say the Saints beat themselves, that is always the mantra of losers. Every wek in the NFL the teams that win are the ones that do not make as many mistakes. The ones that lose comfort themselves by saying, we had chances, we did not excitue we we needed to, it\'s not like thay beat us we lost. Billy if these mistakes had only surfaced in just this one game I would call them easly correctable. These mistakes have been losing games for the Saints last year, all pre season, and now when they coun\'t. The span and consistancy of errors is getting a little to long for such blithe optimism. Penalities, turnovers, droped passes and missed tackles are what make bad teams bad. Every team can win if they don\'t do those things. Untill we find a way to not do those things we will lose and lose often. Does this staff know how to field a mentally tough team that will not shoot itself? We\'ll find out soon enough. [Edited on 9/9/2003 by saint5221]
saint5221 500th Post Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 598

09-09-2003, 08:18 AM	#3
tweeky 500th Post Join Date: May 2003 Location: South Alabama Posts: 779	Am I the only one? I sort of agree. But good teams don\'t drop balls all day long, don\'t turn the ball over 4 times, don\'t commit pre-snap penalties on 3rd down and short. If we can just stop doing what bad teams do, we can become a good team. You\'re right, those are correctable mistakes, but we haven\'t corrected them in about 8 games. I think everyones fear is that Haslet and company are incapable of correcting the little things on both sides of the ball. Last nights game was encouraging because Philly looked a lot worse than we did and I\'ll bet nobody\'s calling for McNabb\'s head or predicting dom and gloom for the Eagles. [Edited on 9/9/2003 by tweeky]
	Whether we agree or disagree; its all for Him.

09-09-2003, 08:25 AM	#4
nocloning 100th Post Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 302	Am I the only one? First of all: 27 points is 27 points is 27 points is a lot. (Repeat after me) Don\'t look at the stats, just look at what you saw on the field. They played ball control offense because that was all they needed to do. If the Saints would have taken the lead or shut down the run Hasselbeck would have thrown the ball downfield - and yes, I believe he would have torched our defensive backs for a TD or two, but that\'s not the point here. The point is our pass defense didn\'t look good just because they only gave up 137 yards. That\'s misleading, they weren\'t really taken to the test. What I\'m saying is that the Seahawks didn\'t do anything special on offense or defense. What happend is the Saints beat themselves with penalties, turnovers, and dropped passes. Not exactly what I call positive. You say these errors are easily corrected. Maybe, but the question was if anyone saw something positive in the game in Seattle. \"We will probably look better next week\" is not something positive. My three keys to victory were: Pass rush, turnovers and avoiding penalties. Sadly, I was right.
nocloning 100th Post Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 302	\"What is Wal-Mart? Is it like they sell wall stuff?\"

09-09-2003, 08:39 AM	#5
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209	Am I the only one? Saints5221 -- I guess I did not get my point across. Here is my point: Turnovers, penalties, and dropped passes, cost us the game. I don\'t know why they happened. I do know Haslett and Venturi didn\'t do any of those things. How about let\'s forget last season and concentrate on THIS season. I\'m so sick of hearing about last season!! How many times are you guys going to beat that in the ground? Sure it may be relevant to the mistakes that happened against Seattle and maybe it\'s not. But, how many times do we need to hear this? There was nothing wrong with the coaching or play calling. The offense put the defense into some positons where the Seahawks had a very short field. This has nothing to do with last year -- this has to do with holding on to the ball. It\'s really that simple. Nothing complicated about it. The offense moved the ball up and down the field. The receivers dropped a lot of balls and the offense had way to many penalties that killed drives. Again, it\'s that simple. Stat\'s do not tell the whole story and neither does comparing everything to last year. You don\'t turn the ball over 4 times, have 10 penalties for 110 yards and expect to win a game. Go ahead and blame the coaches if you want, but I don\'t get it.
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209

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09-09-2003, 08:49 AM	#6
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209	Am I the only one? clone -- Not exactly what I call positive. You say these errors are easily corrected. Maybe, but the question was if anyone saw something positive in the game in Seattle Seattle had 270 yards of total offense, 151 rushing and 119 passing. 3rd down efficiency 3-12, 2-4 in red zone efficency, and 2-3 in goaltogo situations. They were forced to punt 7 times. One of Seattle\'s scoring drives - 7 plays, 3 yards! The Seahawks scored three touchdowns on drives of 3, 23, and 38 yards. That sounds postive for the defense. Sounds like turnovers cost us the game. Do you see nothing positive in there?
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209

09-09-2003, 09:26 AM	#7
saint5221 500th Post Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 598	Am I the only one? Of course there are positives there are always positives, the problem is the negatives out weigh the positives. As to forgeting last season, I hate to issue over used conventional wisdom ,but it does fit here, Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Looking at last year is very relevant in this case because the play is the same, there is a continuum here. It tells us the problems of last year have not been fixed. If you bury you head in the sand every thing looks fine, if you come up for air you\'ll see a few things to be concerned about. There is no maybe about it\'s relevance, it is directly relevant to the core of the issue, how and why the Saints lose games. Looking at one game, one season only, will never tell you the whole story, You have to look at everything, see how it all fits together. Turnovers, penalties, and dropped passes, cost us the game. I don\'t know why they happened. I do know Haslett and Venturi didn\'t do any of those things. I say they did. When a team exibits a pattern of mental errors and lack of focus, this is within the realm of the coaching staff and it\'s tone and focus set. Some teams always execute well and make few mistakes, some teams always struggle, even when the personel changes. Why do you think that is? Coaching. Billy you love stats, they help understand things but only in context. Mark Twain said there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The stats miss the truth here. If you want the truth there is one stat you can look at, 27-10
saint5221 500th Post Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 598

09-09-2003, 09:44 AM	#8
lumm0x Resident antediluvian Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,026	Am I the only one? Billy, I\'ll agree that the defense should not shoulder the burden of the loss. But, they didn\'t play well. You\'ve quoted all sorts of stats to show that they were effective, but as you also mentioned, Seattle played with a short field because of the turnovers and thus, didn\'t have to march the length of the field to score. The fact that we gave up equal passing and rushing yards only means that Seattle was not forced to throw to beat us. We gave up 50 yards rushing to a veteran fullback? Many of Alexander and Strong\'s rush yards came in blatant rushing situations. The Saints D had 8-9 in the box and they blasted for big carries. Our DL was 1-2 yards back of the line of scrimmage on every running play.....moving backwards. Our LBers were trapped behind the DL and couldn\'t see the ball carrier squirt outside until it was too late. And then there was the hideous tackling....that spoke volumes for itself. What bothers me the most was all of the \"pillow talk\" from the players and coaching staff about how we will see the true defense in Seattle, about how we will unleash the beast. We did absolutely nothing differnt defensively against Seattle than we did in preseason. In this I\'m not just talking about poor play, but poor scheming. We still have that sweet vanilla coating. The defense was put in a bad position all day. That is the truth. They didn\'t shut down anything though. The fact that Seattle didn\'t have to do anything special to win the game is the scariest thought here. Turnovers, penalties and dropped passes cost us this game. Agreed. Few defenses could have overcome this position and I would not have expected ours to, but to say they had a good showing is very courteous of you to not want to hurt their feelings.

09-09-2003, 09:54 AM	#9
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209	Am I the only one? LummOX -- I never said the defense had a good showing. But, if it helps your post sound better, feel free to misquoute me all you want. How do you figure the schemeing was bad? You just said we had eight in the box. Seattle did most of the damage running the ball. Maybe you would have put 10 in the box? What would you have done ole wise one? Granted our denfense was not dominating and I didn\'t suggest that. What I said is that our defense did not cost us the game. They forced Seattle to punt 7- times and were put in bad situations. It\'s hard for most defenses to overcome that. Everyone talks about Seattle running a ball control offense and using the clock up. Well, they lost in that attempt because we had the ball for 34 minutes despite our offense turning the ball over 4-times. Again, how do you explain that???
BillyCarpenter1 Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,209

09-09-2003, 10:04 AM	#10
JOESAM2002 1000 Posts + Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: CRYSTAL BEACH TEXAS Posts: 4,100	Am I the only one? Looks like we need to hire a jockey to beat this dead horse some more. I got one last question for you Billy. If the Saints had the ball for 34 minutes as you said. Doesn\'t that speak volumns about how inept they were? How many times on average does an offense touch the ball in a given game? Maybe 8 or 9? To have touched the ball 8 or 9 or even 10 times in this game and have 4 turnovers leaves the percentage pretty high wouldn\'t you say? Everyone likes to use quotes on this board so much. Here\'s one for you. \"Statistics are for losers.\" Seems to me the man that said that was a pretty good coach. Vince Lombardi.
	Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot, than to open it and remove all doubt!!!!! "Every time you think, you weaken the nation!" Moe Howard...The Three Stooges.