Vilma Says Saints are in a Good Place Heading into the Regular Season
 

New Orleans Saints LB Jonathan Vilma
Post-Practice Media Availability
Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Coming off of that Oakland game, what are your thoughts on how you guys performed?

“We like to treat that third preseason game as close to a regular season game as we can get. I felt like we definitely improved as a defense from that Houston game to the Oakland game. There are still some things that we need to correct. We came out yesterday and today and got some really good work in. We’re always trying to work on those little things, the little details. We’re in a good place right now heading into next week against Green Bay.”

Can you be specific on what details you touched on today and yesterday at practice?

“It’s always continuing on the fundamentals. Our tackling was still a little spotty at times in the Oakland game. Our run fits weren’t exact at times. We harp on and preach hustling and effort. We wanted to make sure we got something out of practice yesterday and today and we did that.”

Do you contribute those factors to the new training camp schedule with only one practice?

“No. We don’t like making excuses. We work on trying to fix it and get it right and get it to our standards. That’s our focus. We don’t worry about why’s it’s not happening, we just get it corrected.”

You mentioned the tackling. How worried are you about it at this point in training camp?

“Not at all. We don’t make that an issue. As I said, we just worry about correcting it. We’ve been doing that. We did it yesterday and we did it again today.”

Full presser below.
Vilma Says Saints are in a Good Place Heading into the Regular Season

I like it when players don't try to make a bunch of excuses and just try to fix the problem instead. Thats what will make a team great.

So they don't make tackling an issue, but they're working on correcting it?

Just wanted to point out that during the past couple of seasons, we've been a gang tackling team. We've seen our players this preseason being put in a lot of one on one situations where our players aren't flying towards the ball. Maybe being vanilla as we are in our base defense has something to do with... just wanted to throw that out there.

Yes, I am looking for excuses.

"Our tackling was still a little spotty at times in the Oakland game."

You think?

Cross my fingers for no injuries tonight!! (please, please, please!!)

Except for tackling I would have to agree with him.