BillyC

Mickles: Saints ready to get to work on offseason tasks


By SHELDON MICKELS
smickles@theadvocate.com
Advocate sportswriter

Nearly three weeks after ending the season with a 13-7 win over the Dallas Cowboys, the dust has all but settled on the New Orleans Saints' 2003 campaign.
But as second-year General Manager Mickey Loomis pointed out Wednesday, the autopsy is still being conducted on a team that finished a disappointing 8-8 and missed the playoffs for the third consecutive season.

Preliminary findings showed the Saints were the victims of many things in 2003: they led the NFL with 20 fumbles lost and were terribly inconsistent on offense, the defense gave up too many rushing yards, and they had numerous breakdowns on special teams. Pre-snap penalties on both sides of the ball were also an all-too-common occurrence for Jim Haslett's club.

Each of those problems and many others will be analyzed over the next two weeks as the Saints front office and coaching staff, as they typically do at this time of the year, put the football operations under the microscope.

Loomis said the Saints will come up with a list of between 15 and 25 things that will need to be done as it relates to the team's personnel. He said that list contained 20 objectives last season and all were crossed off their list.

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