Offense must take a hit for defense to improve
 

Our offense is totally loaded with tons of talent at skill positions, and our o-line was able to reload mid-season after our starting center quit.

With Drew Brees, Marques Colston and others becoming free agents or requiring new contracts, the offense will have to restructure to allow the defense to have cap money to upgrade.

And Drew Brees won't be cheap... same for Colston. Brees is a definite with probably the biggest contract in NFL history (as big as Payton Manning at least).

Without going deep into detail, what does Mickey Loomis do? Who do we choose to release so we can beef up our defense?

Think about it, if we get a new d-coordinator we'll need to reload linebacker, corner-back, defensive line to change this defense.

Colston would be first on my list of the big three...

Get rid of Colston....?

I say here are some of the offensive weapons we need to use as trade bait or release.

Colston. As trade bait. Lets face it, my granny can catch a ball in traffic from Drew. Besides we have Lance Moore.

Lance Moore. If we keep Colston..He's trade Bait.

Will Smith
Devery (As much as I love him) He's a #1 on most teams.
P.T. (Waiting for the "Are you Freakin CRAZY"'s)
Ivory If we keep PT.

I wait here for the bashing to begin.

I don't think we can mess with our RB's too much. First time in years we've had stability there, and with Ingram out, PT out, it would have been sketchy with Ivory and Sproles. Ivory was due for an injury (he's great but he's hurt a lot) and we would been searching un-signed players to make it through the playoffs had we continued.

Colston is a big part of our offense, but something has to give here......

It's interesting you say this Halo because when you look at the 5 highest paid guys on the 2011 team, 4 of the 5 are on defense. Here's a list of the 5 guys who's cap #'s were the highest in 2011:
1) Drew Brees: $11,693,500
2) Will Smith: $8,750,000
3) Jonathan Vilma: $6,330,000
4) Sedrick Ellis: $5,723,000
5) Jabari Greer: $5,250,000

The team has invested in the defense but clearly it isn't working. It's frustrating that the offense may have to take a hit for the defense when the front office did commit some big contracts to the defense.

A new coordinator is the first step, I prefer Spags. When you invest these kind of contracts on one side of the ball and they don't get the job done someone has to take the blame, and I think it falls on GW.

I think next thing is releasing Smith and Vilma who are on the backside of their careers.

Last I say we draft defense, defense, defense this year. Get LB's and DE's with speed who can pressure the QB and play in coverage.

Let's be the first team to play in the Super Bowl at home!

I totally 100% agree.

We need more balance. Not less. Record breaking offense (all positives) are fantastic. But it goes to show, Brees - fantastic as he is - and what great joy he has brought the franchise was not enough to get us to the NFC Championship game, and that is now for 2 consecutive years.

Agree here too. This continues my need more balance. Saturday we got screwed partly because we lost PT and that was despite Sproles and Ivory. And let us not feed the wound by remembering our RB (and defense) situation of our previous playoff campaign.

It is a tricky one. We love our stars but we can't have it all. Somewhere we have to be less emotional and more objective and say let one or two of our stars develop elsewhere, for the benefit of the TEAM.

Drew Brees = Atlas. It's time to take the globe off of his shoulder.

Jimmy Graham will be a free agent after next year. We can do without Colston. I'd rather keep Brees, Nicks and Greer

I say we trade Ivory for a solid LB if possible or maybe a couple of draft picks.

Don't get me wrong, I love Ivory; he is one of my favorite guys on the team. But, as someone (I forget who, I am sorry) posted around here earlier today: if he's in the game, you know we're running it. We've already got that with Ingram. I know it's a nice problem to have too many RBs, but not at the expense of, potentially, shoring up a porous defense...

Ivory wouldn't net us even a 4th.