Last years offseason effects
 

Does anyone think all the book tours and leno shows and tv appearances for our boys didnt give them a chance to catch a breath for this season? I mean I know when I take vacation, I turn my phone off because if I take one phone call its like I never got away from the office.

It may off been a reason that we started slow, examples being our offense not as explosive to start with.
They got it in gear on Halloween vs steelers, just the fact that we let teams make comebacks instead of shutting them out once we gained a lead is what hurt us.
Looking forward to some signings this offseason though

We finished with the 3rd best record. We did fine considering all the injuries and restricted free-agency rules.

oh, I totally agree with you, I just thought they all seemed a step behind this year. Somthing just didnt seem right from the get go. But I know what your saying and dont take anything from them for the accomplishments.

That something was that many players were not ready for an NFL season.

Hey, we even suspected that Drew had an injury remember.

To win a championship requires a number of things....

1. Good players - goes without saying
2. Good coaching - same
3. Some luck - See Washington last year; Arizona this year
4. Some breaks - See Minnesota losing late last year to give us the ability to take the final week off; See Hartley missed FG in week 3
5. Staying relatively injury free

To repeat
1. solid leadership - Saints have it... New England has it... Pittsburgh does not
2. Commitment to the cause - I think the Saints showed that
3. Staying relatively injury free

11-5 after all that occurred on the injury front.... after the breaks going against us at times (again see the Arizona game.... and that was not isolated... many fumbles not bouncing our way)... after everyone pointing at us... was remarkable in my opinion....

The ATL has been getting the breaks and are relatively injury free.... I don't think they have the leadership we have (Brees>icy-poo..... Sharper... Vilma) and they dont have the coaching... for that reason I think they go down this week....

The time is still NOW... some wise moves (in Sean/Loomis I trust) and we will be in the mix.... need some things to break our way and we will be back

Yes, 11-5 was remarkable. As was the Seahawks beating us.

If we learn or acquire anything in this offseason, I simply hope it is the drive to PUT A TEAM AWAY once we have a commanding lead.

THAT will take us to the Superbowl next year with the exact players we have now.

Alaska

Not nocking it, but, TOP 3 records puts us in the top 10% of teams.
Out in the first round of the playoffs, puts us in the bottom 7% of playoff teams.

AK

I said it all year --- it affected us. BUT, the NFL is a business --- I can't blame these guys in capitalizing on an opportunity to make some extra coin with book deals, appearances, etc. Any of us would have done it as well ... It's good business.

Before the season started, someone asked me "Do you think the Saints are as focused going into this year as they were last year". My answer was "No Way". Not with all the reasons that the OP mentioned above. But I think the biggest factor that affected us this year were the injuries, ESPECIALLY at RB.

It may have contributed to the lackluster start, but I think the residual wore off and injuries were the largest factor this year. One thing about injuries is they affect all teams not just ours, so you just need to find a way to try to win.

The off season conditioning activities still had a tremendous amount of players. We did get a slow start but the injuries just kept coming and we couldn't run the ball with our 9th string running back.

Sometimes a team just don't have "it". Its hard to point to a specific thing and say that whats missing. Its such atremendous amonut of factors that affects a team.

The one area that had soooooooo many injuries and made it damn near impossible to recover from was RB. We really had a rough ride in that position.

Considering all of the distractions and injuries, the Saints did a heck of a job. I worried all season (and offseason) of how the book signings, the tv commercials, shows, etc would affect us, but all in all they handled themselves very professionally and I do believe we would not have lost the games we did had we had an effective running game. Nothing to hang our heads about this year.

Totally worth it. I don't care what happened and every celebration, book signing, interview etc. was worth it. There is only one time that a city get's it's first Super Bowl and every last thing they did was OK with me.

Considering all of the distractions, to follow it up with an 11-5 year was pretty darn good. I look forward to us being VERY strong next year. As much as we, as fans, see the holes the Saints have to fill, the staff knows what they need to do much much better.

You younger guys don't know how it was back in the day... when you would literally NEVER see Saints on TV commercials, or barely in any stories outside of the local paper. Late night talk show hosts would actually make jokes about the Saints... it was a totally different atmosphere back then.

People used to joke back then that LSU and the Saints were like brothers. LSU was the older sophisticated brother who you expected a lot from. The Saints? Well they were the "special needs" brother who you'd be happy with if he could take a bath by himself without drowning.

We always loved them both. :)

That was our problem the injuries we had little or no injuries going to the playoffs last year. If you look back the last couple of years last year we didn't have alot of guys on IR the year before that half the damn team was on IR just like this year and I late be the one that say this I'm not a big fan of him but when Reggie play the whole year we go far in the playoffs 2006 and last year. I know he don't play defense but this offense start with him and Bress that's why Payton is not going to let him go anywhere.

Reggie is important to the offense just not at the price the Saints are paying him, hopefully he restructures his deal so the Saints can spend on the UFAs that need to come back and on free agents that can improve the defense

No dought he need to restructure his contact he's important to our offense but were not dummys either that need to happen for use to free some money and if he ack stupid he can walk Payton will draft someone just like him but there's know one like him that is a free agent.