seraph33

With the Saints organization listing its problems to be addressed as CB, LB, and DT and this having been a good year for free agent CB, we managed to sign . . . a back-up RB.
Yes it was a need; however, the top FA CB's are all gone. Antoine Winfield - Vikings, Ahmad Plummer - 49ers, Fernando Bryant - Lions, Shawn Springs - the Evil Empire (Redskins) . . . all gone, and the Saints failed to make a significant play for any of them. True Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor (the 2 Eagles) are still on the board however they are 32 and 31 respectively and want the same amount of money that we were apparently unwilling to give the younger guys listed above. Basically by signing either of those 2 guys we are paying big money for a player that will only decline while wearing a Saints uniform. In the meantime we did overpay to keep our own Fred Thomas, who will be 31 this season. Now I like Thomas, he plays with a lot of heart but is flat out overwhelmed when you put him up against a top notch WR. What we really have is a nickel back playing starter. To me this just sends the signal that the Saints are satisfied with our Defense the way it is. They haven't gotten the DT that they were supposed and are now looking at Cedric Woodard who Scouts Inc. has rated as an "Adequate Backup".

This really frustrates me b/c we have MULTIPLE needs on the defensive side of the ball and the Saints are acting like there is just one and they can address that in the draft. We really lost an opportunity to upgrade our secondary with a talented Free Agent CB and focus our draft pick on getting a MLB (Jonathan Vilma), OLB (D.J. Williams), DT (Vince Wilfolk or Randy Starks) or even steal an awesome WR (there are so many good one that one is bound to fall in the first round). Instead the Saints aren't going to solve anything through free agency so we will only be able to address 1 maybe 2 positions adequately through the draft but lose the ability to draft the best player on the board. If they want to have the Patriots' approach then that is fine but in order for that to work you need EXCELLENT coaching and schemes, of which we have neither.

WhoDat

I feel you seraph. The worst part is, the Saints are likely to be 9-7 and one game out of the playoffs this season again if things continue like this. Certain people on this board will rail you for being unhappy with the team\'s moves (or lack thereof) in FA and call you negative. They\'ll predict greatness and when you predict mediocrity they\'ll pound you some more. You\'ll talk about how the coaches can\'t get it done and they\'ll say, \'this year is the year they HAVE to get it done.\' Come December, the same people will be making the same excuses. Nevermind the fact that the team DIDN\'T improve in FA. Nevermind the fact that the coaches DIDN\'T get good performance out of their players or out coach anyone all season. Nevermind that your prediction of mediocrity came true and their optimism was totally unfounded. You\'re just negative and an unhappy miserable person. The sooner you learn to blindly follow the coaching staff and believe everything the team tells you, the sooner you\'ll realize happiness in a self-induced fantasy land. Seraph, I wonder what these same people said about Ditka when he was here. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say about Haslett in a year or two when he\'s gone. I bet they\'ll talk terribly about them... again, nevermind the fact that they supported his every move while he was here.

\"Excuses, excuses, excuses. That’s all anyone ever makes for the New Orleans Saints’ organization.\" - Eric Narcisse


\"Being a Saints fan is almost like being addicted to crack,\" he said.[i]\"You know you should stop, but you just can\'t.\"

saintsfan200

since all the good CB\'s are gone, I would agree the front office really screwed up. The only way they can save face is signing Vincent or Talyor to short-term, low dollar contracts. I will going crazy if we sign Vincent or Talyor to huge deals. Another possibility is the resricted free-agent market, the only thing I see there Renaldo Hill from the cardinals and I\'m not sure how good he is though. We could also trade for Woodson, but I wouldn\'t give much for him

rAge

To many things worse, because we didn\'t get a good CB, we will end up taking one in round 1 and chance are he will bust (because chances are, we will take DeAngelo Hall)...and chances are we will draft that guy over Vilma, who would of filled in the middle of our D for 10 years. Such a great front office we got... :casstet:

Oh and BTW, Rod Coleman just signed with the Falcons. Nice one boys, let a big need go to a division rival.

rusta

i\'m usually pretty optimistic but...........
*&^%ing g@d d@mn sh!!!y free agent period guys
we signed no one, from what i understand we didn\'t even try to get anyone

and i agree our draft will look like a$$ because we\'re gonna get a corner in the first round when we should already have one and draft williams or vilma instead

i thought it was a gift from heaven when it seemed like there were good free agents at all the positions we needed until i agonized as robaire then winfield and finally plummer were gone without us even putting up a fight

our front office truly looks stupid, for the love of god benson bring mueller back!!!!! i can\'t take another year on the bubble, i would rather be in the basement

VaeVictus

I hope we go linebacker with our first pick, perhaps we can trade our two number 2\'s for a higher pick and get a decent corner with that pick. I wish we could find a way to get Sean Taylor, but the SAints would probably trade up to get a player like Jason Babin from WEstern Michigan with a pick that high knowing of their ignorance so well. I really think we can trade Brooks and 1st rounder, let Bouman give us an 8-8 season (which is optimistic at best even with Brooks) and continue to build our defense around Taylor and maybe Boulware in the 2nd. Crap, the RAiders would love to take Aaron Brooks, they are in desperate need of a QB. Wishful thinking. If we stay where we are, we need to take Vilma, hope one of the many CB\'s fall to our 2nd round, which one has to, then maybe go with Boulware again in the 2nd if he is there.

WhoDat

You know what? At this point, I\'m not opposed to getting rid of Brooks. He is definitely overpaid, but also definitely not the problem with this team. I was happy to keep him for consistency\'s sake, assuming we got three impact players in positions of need on D. But we didn\'t.

Now, I say, who cares? Last season, when the Saints started out 1-5 I said that the best thing that could happen is for them to keep losing and end up 5-11 or something like that. Why? B/c it would have cost Haslett his job, probably Loomis too, and the Saints would have had high draft picks. The worst thing that could happen, I said, is for them to get hot and end up close to the playoffs. What does 8-8 do for us, I asked. It gives Haslett another year and puts us too high in the draft to get a meaningful player. I got reamed as usual.... but I was right.

With the team we have, and the ridiculous amount of cap room, a freaking gerbal could fill our three positions of need and make this team a contender. Instead this team will do what it does best - maximize the agony for its fans. They\'ll go 9-7 next year and be the playoff race until the last week or two. Why? SO that the can string your pain out as long as possible. But the bottom line will be that they end up on the outside looking in for the fourth straight year. Be ready for the pain amigos. After all, we ARE talking about the Saints.

\"Excuses, excuses, excuses. That’s all anyone ever makes for the New Orleans Saints’ organization.\" - Eric Narcisse


\"Being a Saints fan is almost like being addicted to crack,\" he said.[i]\"You know you should stop, but you just can\'t.\"

BrooksMustGo

So here\'s were we stand after the first week of free agency:

Howard--good to keep him, bad not to get him signed prior to the Kearse signing. He\'s probably going to be the franchise player for a few seasons.

Crowell--nothing to be angry about, nothing to be excited about either. Could be really good, could not make it to the final roster.

Rogers--If ther Front Office wasn\'t going to do anything at LB in free agency, then this is probably a good idea.

Brown--We resigned one of our nicklebacks. Not a big move, doesn\'t fix the CB position on this team.

Thomas--I really like the guy but he doesn\'t fix the QB position and we may have paid too much to get him.

Stecker--Tampa has had a crappy running game for several years now--if this guy was going to be a solid backup, he would have already established himself. We paid too much money for a return specialist. I think this says more about Beerman\'s future with the team than us getting a backup at RB.

So to recap:

CB--In an offseason with a LOT of legitimate young #2 CB\'s available, we move on exactly none of them. In an offseason with a few legitimate #1 CB\'s available, we move on exactly none of them. We have yet again utterly failed to address a need position that has been a need position since Haslett arrived here. At this point I think we\'d be best served to spend too much and get Bobby Taylor or Troy Vincent in here so that Thomas and the rookie we draft don\'t spend all season pretending to have a pass defense.

LB --In an offseason with few quality LB\'s available, we moved on none. I\'m not making as much blame here simply because there wasn\'t a lot available, but we sign Rogers. This is easily the weakest part of the defense and has been since Haslett got here. I guess we could move on Dhani Jones (Haz will like his speed) or Brandon Short (Venturi will like his work ethic) but I\'m be rather ho-hum about that signing too. At this point, I wouldn\'t be opposed to trying to get Matt Stewart from Atlanta, the tender for him is only a 4th rounder. Vilma, Lehman or Williams may be the only choice we have left here, and we\'ll have to flip a coin to decide whether we want CB\'s or LB\'s.

DT--There were any number of quality guys here, we made a little move on Young, but no moves on any of the others. Smith would have been a great signing, but we didn\'t even talk to the guy. Ted Washington would have been a good stopgap, but we didn\'t talk to the guy. Now we\'re talking about Gilbert Brown, but he lost his job to Grady. There\'s no way Gilbert has enough left to play most of the snaps for a full season. Even though he\'s a 2 gap guy--the best move left is to talk to Warran Sapp.

RB--I think we\'re kidding ourselves to say that Stecker is the answer to serious depth at the position. I still like Stacy Mack as a goal line/short yardage back who could fill in for a few games if he had too. If we were willing to go a little younger, Correll Buckhalter only has a 4th round tender on him and is used to the running back by committee approach. Even though I had hoped that we could have actually made some free agency moves and draft a guy like Tatum Bell.

So we could still make some moves, but we don\'t have a world of options. I think we could sign Dhani and Sapp, make the trade for Buckhalter and re-sign Terrell Smith and still go into the draft with enough flexibility to get a top CB and a good LB. I have this sick feeling that Haz will take a DT in round 1 though. The longer we go without addressing the DT position, the more convinced I am that Haz will take one up high.

I really think based on our willingness to sit on our hands this week, we\'ve run out of choices. Our refusal to make moves screams at all the free agents out there that we are content to be a 7-9 to 9-7 team.

We need to make a move, a big one. Looking at our roster, there are only a few guys that have any real value in trades. Brooks, Deuce, Horn and Howard. No one will trade for T-Sucky, Sullivan is still too young, Grant needs more work, Stallworth has no value in a year with so many great young WR\'s coming out, and there are still a lot of quality G\'s and C\'s that haven\'t been signed yet.

So I\'m proposing 2 blockbuster moves and 2 free agent signing.
1. We offer Howard to the Raiders for Woodson. Then we actually have some flexibility on draft day. We get a shut down corner. If we really played our cards right we might be able to exploit Woodson\'s unhappiness with playing in Oakland and come away with Woodson and a pick for Howard.

2. We offer Brooks and Horn to the Chargers for their #1 overall and a #3. I\'m not sure we could get both picks, but I think we could come away with 2-3 picks in the deal. We sign Eli and still have enough left to meaningfully address the LB, CB and WR positions. With so many quality WR\'s available, we could manage to get a really good value on one.

3. Sign Sapp--Taking another rookie DT is the doomsday scenario. Sapp would bring an attitude to the D, not sure I want our guys acting like Sapp, but I do want offenses to respect/fear our D.

4. Sign Darrell Jackson--He\'s young and Horn is old. Jackson could really be a good #1 receiver in the right place.

Without something drastic, I\'m with WhoDat, We\'ll be in for a long, mediocre year.

http://www.blackandgold.net/site/signature/buddysig.jpg

rusta

other than signing darrell jackson (whom i\'m not that high on, he drops too many balls) i have to disagree on the rest of your ideas

sapp would just be another waste of time and money, he\'s over the hill and his attitdue is not what this young team needs

losing howard for woodson is dumb, without a pass rush even woodson will get burned

i know you hate brooks so i won\'t really comment on that except to say that AB is not what\'s wrong with this team, trading horn?? i\'m not against that depending on what we can get for him

at this point i think i would almost be more content to make no moves in free agency and ride with what we have and what we can get in the draft as long we don\'t draft a damn DT in the 1st round

whowatches

I don\'t want Woodson. He will be trouble here. You think he blew up at Callahan last year. Wait til he gets hold of Haslett. We\'ve all seen how players who question authority fare under the watch of Cancer-Killa Haz... kinda like posts under the watch of Pak :P . Look at Woodson\'s numbers, too. We\'d be paying him major money this year for the numbers he put up back in 98 and 99.

Losing Howard would also be a major bo-bo. We are on the verge of having a dominant, young defensive line. No way I wanna mess that up. Also, in my hierarchy, a DE is much more important than a corner. Rusta makes a good point. No corner looks good without a pash rush.

I really want us to sign a quality DT and LB during free agency. I am disappointed that we\'ve let a couple of very good tackles leave the market, but I\'m keeping my fingers crossed that management knows what it\'s doing :mad2: and will remedy that situation so that we do not have to spend another first round pick on the D-line.

As far as linebacker goes, one of my favorites is still out there... Dhani Jones. Sign him or Ian Gold, and we improve our defense significantly.

Can\'t go there with you on Sapp, BMG. I\'d have a rough time pulling for him every week... I\'m sure I could do it, but it\'d be painful. We\'d be paying for his name and ego rather than his current abilty, too. Would he demand some time at tight end? :hallucine:

And I know this will hurt you, but I do not think we should trade for Eli unless we\'re ready to scrap the season. I think we still have a very good opportunity to be successful next year. We will not be as successful behind a rookie quarterback, especially one we had to give up our best receiver for and a posible defensive starter (our first round pick).

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