Positives and Negatives
 

+ Reggie Bush had a really good game today. North-south running and mostly good decicions. Makes me wonder if one of the problems with him is not getting enough snaps running the football. 70yds on 9 carries without having a really long one.

+ Adrian Arrington first game as a pro and all he does is leads one of the leauges best passing attacks with 7 catches for 79yds.

+ Jeff Charleston in the mix again making a big play. I get the feeling we will see more and more of him not only this year but also next.

+ Garret Hartley had a rough start to the season but has responded well and been really solid as of late.

+ Will Smith is getting held, all the time and are still making plays. Had a nice sack and are showing good form for the playoffs. Was blatantly held on that secon Bucs TD which prevented him from making the play.


- Drew Brees has not looked really sharp as of late. I know I'ma catch a lot of flak for puting him as a negative but he's not playing up to his capacity right now. Balls seems to sail on recievers or be too short. And the INTS just keep coming - is this the Madden Curse?

- Gregg Williams was one of the big reasons why the Saints won the SB last year transforming a underachieving defence into a beast. Right now the defence looks vanilla without bringing any real pressure or geting turnovers like last year. He needs to pull som aces out his sleeve come the wildcard game.

- Julius Jones had the kind of day that gets a 4th string RB cut in the offseason. 2 receptions for 5 yards, 4 carries for 6 yards and a key fumble that had the momentum of the game swing.

I think he is finally getting back to 100% healthy


Yep!

Yep!

Yep!

Yep!


That one int today was all on Moore, and he has proven he can win regardless of mistakes

I believe the vanilla defense play-calling was by design. Don't want to give up too much for film study...

Can't argue with this...

Don't forget Porters offsides on the FG kick. And Greer is still getting beat on some big plays. That ugly mix up with Porter and Robinson allowed the Bucs to get a big gain. So the secondary as a whole was sub par in my book. I sure hope that Jenkins isn't too badly hurt.

Cant' really fault Brees on that interception with Moore falling down (Good tackle by Moore on that play). Still, Brees is great when he's not playing his best.

I was disgusted by this game. It was hard to watch with bad play calling, poor play and injuries.

Reggie played very well. I haven't seen that player since last year.

Only positive is we already had the 5th see locked up and the Falcons won so the game was really meaningless unless you consider every game is important to the attitude of the team and more so for the fans. You need momentum going into the playoffs and that we do not have said Yoda

Agree with most of your points.

Jones was getting cut anyway, along with Betts. The Saints have Bush, PT, Ivory & Hamilton.

Defense could have moved up to tutti-frutti without showing too much. They almost played like the Baltimore game.

The one Brees interception was due to Moore slipping, but he still seems to be out of sync, compared to last year.

Most teams need momentum, we didnt need it last year. It would have been great to end the season with a W, but oh well. A different way for us to do it this year. How great would it be to knock ATL out of the playoffs in their own stadium?!?!?!?!?!

Falcants cake walk is over. I want the Saints to beat them in the NFCC game; they would cry over that more than the Vikings fans did!

At least the grounds crew will have the off-season to get all the bird droppings off the field.

11-5 regular season.
Secured Wild Card spot in the playoffs.
Defending champions of the NFL.

Hard to feel anything other than satisfied. :bng:

Positive: The regular season is over and we're in the playoffs.

Lets be honest! Today's game was always going to be like a pre-season game! I don't think there were many people, including some Panthers fans, that thought the Panthers would win today and so it proved to be.

It hard to get motivated about a game that means virtually nothing, especially when the Saints can see the score of the Panthers game in the dome and realise they are getting hammered!

I'm absolutely certain that next week you will see a Saints team so fired up that if you happened to get any where near them you would feel the heat from 10 yards away! Just hope the injuries are not too serious!

GEAUX SAINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought I saw Junior today! Charleston is a play maker. Shanle showed up in the numbers this week.

I can't help but think they played kinda sloppy today seeing that the game meant nothing as Carolina was getting stomped. I am fully confident that in the playoffs, we'll "Bring the Wood"!

I've always thought this since last year. The Saints are a big time team, and they shine in the big time games. (Steelers, Falcons)

Can't wait for the playoffs. Could tell Drew is pissed and itching already.

Saints need to get everybody healthy for next Saturday and come out and destroy some people. I mean absolutely blow SEA/STL out of the water. Bring the wood, drop some bombs, whatever you want to call it, we need to punish some people, get our swagger back, and get teams worrying about what we're going to do, not the other way around.

Today was tough to watch, especially when you consider that outside of Lance Moore, our top six offensive threats were out (Colston, PT, Graham, Shockey, Ivory, Thomas).

True. That's the fact of the matter and the ony one that means anything in a long hard season.

I would like to congratulate the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on a fine season. No one in their right mind would have ever predicted a 10-6 record out of them. Like I said in another post, the Saints did appear to let their foot off the accelerator once Atlanta went up 14-0 over Carolina. As the game wore on it was pretty obvious the Saints were already preparing for next week.

Overall, another great season! Super Bowl Champions last year, followed up nicely with a 11-5 season. The Saints really have a nice opportunity in the playoffs again, they are more than capable of winning 4 straight!!!

We made the second season. Everything else is academic...and academics hack me off...

I just think he has looked sloppy this year compared to the previous. I'm afraid the Saints will find themselves in a hole because of his misstakes that might be too deep to dig out off.

Thank you for that Saintfan... With all the drama of the last few Saints games, (ten years of them for me) it's easy to forget the fact! OOOOHHHH C'mon Saturday!

Yes, I was hoping for three reps from the NFC South.

Gotta hurt if you are in the bay to see a 7-9 Hawks go in in front of you.

Positive: We got there despite some unreal errors during the regular season 9e.g. no FG loss v Atlanta).

Negative: I can't go with playing own when the game was meaningless. Perennial champions don't know what that is. Sure, use conservative and one-dimensional playcalling. But I don't know how champions can play down. And surely the better way is to take our 1st teamers off the field.

Daniel looked just fine to me for a backup. He made a bad pitch to Reggie, but it was the guy's first NFL action. He made a few nice throws.

While it did have a pre-season game feel to it, I must admit I'm concerned about a couple things I saw when it was starters versus starters (excluding injured players on both teams)

It seemed when Drew dropped to pass, none of our WR's were open. And most of Drews completions were to a Saint being draped by a Buc.

Conversely, when Freeman threw the ball it seemed like there wasn't a Saint withing 5 yards of their receivers.

It looked like the pass version of the Baltimore Raven game.

I'm hoping it was simply a vanilla scheme combined with the knowledge that there was no way the Panthers were gonna beat the Falcons so we just didn't play our A-game.

I think that team I saw Sunday loses at Seattle, but I'm sure we'll ratchet it up a few notches.

The positives: We're back in the playoffs.....Reggie ran hard between the tackles.....AA.....Shanle played well
Negatives: We played down to the competition again.....injuries

You don't need to say it over and over. We get it. You want Adrian McPherson back.

And just how do you know that Chase isn't a NFL caliber QB? He's only thrown 3 passes in his career [not including preseason], which he completed 2 for 16 yards.

And how do you know that Pryor is a NFL caliber player when he isn't even in the league yet?