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.

i'd love to see meachem go...i'm on the fence about vilma, though i've loved the guy...he has semi-disappeared the past 2 seasons.

shanle is a MUST go...it's hard to say who should go on offense...i think colston will be harder to replace than you all seem to think.

Well IF you had to let one of the following go, who would you let go? I doub we can keep all 4.

Brees
Nicks
Greer
Colston

Of those 4, as much as I hate to say it, I would let Colston go; and that depends on how much it would cost to keep him.

Great opinions in here. Love what people are saying. We need to be caeful about droppig our offence too much. As much as that may allow us room to improve our defence, it is unlikely to happen overnight and our offence is so potent that it does always give us a chance to make up for the frailty of the defence. So my opinion:

Brees - Would anyone seriously let him go regardless of how much he costs? I hope not!
Nicks - Pay the man. Him and Evans are awesome and they solidify the O-Line. They allow a 'good' centre to be fine and help the tackles to up their game. Bushrod is as good as he is now because of Nicks and Evans. Also, allow our running game to go through the gaps and protect Brees.
Colston - Cheerio. He is going to want good money and we havent got it. Brees can hit many receivers and make them look good. Arrington will step up here and I bet we could get a late draft pick who is ok.

As regards trading. I would look at shipping Shanle and Vilma. Shanle is mediocre at best and Vilma just isnt cutting it any more. Love the guy but time to go. I would lose Tracey Porter as well. Just not doing it for me. Keep Greer and Robinson. Trade Ellis and Will Smith. That should leave us a load of picks and caproom to rebuild the D.

Oh and biggest release. Gregg Williams. 1 good season and it worked. Hasn't since. Goodbye.

We loaded our high power offense with unknown late draft picks and key free agent acquisitions, and that is the only thing we can hope for for our defense. Our money will be tied up keeping the key players on offense on the field, so we don't have a ton of options in big named free agents. We also need a rt and possible a left tackle. I think our problems on D will be addressed by hiring spags or another coordinator simply because we won't have the cash to beef up our D with big dollar names. IM SO ****ING PISSED OFFF!

we have changed up our line mid season. SP seems to have a talent for creating great olinemen...Dont get me wrong, Nicks is AN AWESOME talent, but i see SP being able to find another one and develop him..I mean look what we invested into Kruetz, he leaves and SP solidifies it one week later..Colston CANNOT go..I dont understand why anyone would think he is replaceable. BTW, what changes if Moore had played?

Greer goes, so does any chance of shutting down a teams number one next year.
Brees in an obvious.

sorry but if one has to go , its gotta be Nicks IMO

@Belair57

I think the opinion on Colston is much like your opinion on Nicks. I think it is easier to replace Colston with another target for Brees and than it is for Nicks to be replaced in the O-line. You think the other way round. I just feel Brees can hit ANY target whereas Nicks does SO much that isn't so easily replaced.

All subjective of course. Maybe the answer is letting both go which frees up a lot of cap room.....

kicks cannot go. You saw how drew performed under pressure. Nicks and Evens protect him more than his tackles on the opposite sides due to Brees playing style.Colston is the only receiver we have that is unreplacable. I think Vima, Meach, Henderson and possible Pierre or even Ivory could be a casualty too.

Vilma, Meach or Henderson go before colston goes

Can't afford to lose colston tbh, he's the only guy that shows up week in and week out.

I will give you that my perception may be flawed..and I know most whodats are in favor in Nicks, but who does drew throw to if Colston is gone? Henderson? no, hes no number one.

Who is going over the middle like Colston does? Meachem? uh NO

Moore? he cant stay healthy and its been a trend, AND hes no number 1 either.

Nicks is GREAT, possibly the best in the NFL...but he will want to get paid to..as Colston will want..

Will Smith is the 1st priority IMO..he needs to be GONE..maybe they can make it work, brees will do whats best for the team.

i guess at this point its all just speculation on our parts, but makes for a great discussion none the less

Vilma needs to go period. Franklin and Rodgers had 1 year contracts= DT in the draft, I want 2, We have DE's so let Smith go, he is overrated. I love Shanle he is solid, but we need youth at the lb. spot, heavy, fast, and hard hitters. Shanle would be a great backup. I like our db.'s probably will be good there although I would keep an eye on Porter, now for the safeties, it's going to depend on the scheme, I love Harper great ss. I can't see him going anywhere, now for Jenkins our 1st round fs. who has played lost all year, lost in G.W. scheme, should get a lot of compitition in training camp and if he can't grasp this scheme write him off, Quaddus will do a better job. Now about the DT's if we draft 2 to get pressure up front it will make our DE's better along with the new lb.'s, win, win. And get rid of Ellis asap, trade, cut, or whatever, waste of time.....

Shanle is solid..that's the funniest thing I have read in days..lmfao

To the folks that think Colston is not replaceable..remember when he was out a bunch of weeks, I think it was last year, Moore stepped up and did great. Moore is a playmaker.

If I may be so bold, it is my opinion that of the players mentioned the most, the guy we can least afford to lose, aside from Drew, is Thomas.

PT is horribly underrated. Horribly.

You cant get rid if Colston. He shows up every week and might have the best hands out of all our WR. Who would you replace him with? DH and RM are no where near the same tyoe of WR Colston is. The money is right there on D. Get rid of Will Smith, Vilma, Tracy Porter. Hell im not in love with Greer. I think Patrick Robinson can be a good replacement and correct me if im wrong but didnt we draft a CB from Louisville. Sounds like we are preparing to get rid of some secondary guys.

Moore was hurt alot this year too. Colston did great when Moore was out as well.

I say Colston stays... He is our go to receiver, more than anyone else. Graham isn't going anywhere! And if we need to replace defensive players, then I say get rid of the defensive players that aren't cutting it. This offense needs to stay intact, as much as possible.... You don't fix a problem, by breaking it further....

Moore is good but he does disappear in games sometimes. Colston is irreplaceable in this offense and nobody besides Graham will go over the middle of the field and take the big hits or even go up and get the ball.

Very good point. It's like watching the Air Coryell Chargers back in the 80's. Go out their and score score score. Don't worry about stopping anybody Drew can do it.

my god...this just needs to be quoted and reiterated since no one commented...

TOTALLY TRUE. he would be an EASY #1 guy on any team tht didn't have 3000 RBs.

Are you guys serious? How many teams would just let they're #1 WR walk? I say Colston stays. As long as we have Colston, Graham and Moore we can afford to let Devery and Meach walk. And sign or draft some cheap WR to replace them and Drew can work with them. I say Brees, Nicks and Colston all stay. Too many big contracts on D for all of them to stay and not producing anything.

Does Brees really need to break the bank? What is enough? Other players need to be paid too. If Brees really want to set himself apart, he would take a reasonable salary so the team can sign his teammates because you win as a team.

What I wonder is when is it enough money, I mean what differnce does it make for an individual to get an 80mil contract instead of a 100mil deal. Either way its an obcene ammount of money and I kinda wonder what a guy like Brees wants more 20mil extra or another ring?

^^This^^

I hate to see Meach walk, but out of offensive weapons, he probably is the most replaceable. But I'm torn because Moore seems to be injured a lot.

What about keeping Meach and letting go of Moore? I have no clue what their respective salary situations are.

On defense I think we need a pretty heavy re-vamping.

All this comes down to one thing for me, though: next year is going to be a drop off for us. Too much re-tooling needs to be done to keep up such a high level of play. Which just makes Saturday's loss so much harder to stomach...we were built to win THIS year with those 1-year contracts we gave out...and we blew it. ARGH!!!!

I think Greer we have Johnny Patrick who just needs to get on the field along with improved play from Robinson we should be set there Porter will be a nickle back as he hasn't made much noise since his super bowl interception

I was incorrect. As Papz pointed out Greer is not a free-agent this year.

But next year we'll have to pay Graham and Greer. Graham is gonna get paid a ton. It may affect how much we pay Colston this year.

Tell me another lb. that has produced and plays each game? And don't say Vilma, that would be a joke!! He is on a steady decline, to light to actually play the middle, runs from straight on tackles, he had a few good years and thats it, he only has a little more speed than Shanle and don't have much of that left. Most over rated MLB. in the game today in my opinion.

I don't disagree with you one iota about Vilma. But to say Shanle is solid is laughable. The guy is a turtle and has ZERO awareness. Whatever good years he had in him are waaay gone and have been. Look at the video!!! If you think this is the only time he has done this you are just seriously in denial.

For the people saying get rid of Moore..are you serious??? Moore is the ONLY receiver who we have that can make moves after the catch.

We have Colston who is a possession receiver, Henderson/Meachum speed receivers. Arrington...who the hell knows, hasn't played enough to get a good feel but strikes me as another possession receiver.

No way do we get rid of Moore and to say he always hurt is laughable.
2006 played 4 games(just started with us)
2007 played 16 games
2008 played 16 games
2009 played 7 games (hurt)
2010 played 16 games
2011 played 14 games

Doesn't look like a person who is "always" hurt to me.

Mike, how many games has Colston played and started in?
I don't know where the stats are... just curious.

I am not trying to knock Colston; I love the guy and he has been a vital clog to the Saints success.

However, he has lost time due to injury the last couple years, and he is starting to, (I hate to say regularly), drop passes in crucial points, that he used to always catch.

When Colston broke his collarbone in Week 1, I believe it was Lance Moore that stepped up and picked up the slack.

Colston has already said that he was going to the highest bidder; i am not sure what the blue book vlaue is on a 6+ year WR with the injury history he has, but I am sure there he will get offers.

Good O-linemen are priceless, and Pro Bowl ones are worth their weight in gold so unless SP has been grooming one, I don't see the Saints letting him walk.

I think I know where you are going with this but it really isn't to bad:

2006 played 14 games
2007 played 16 games
2008 played 11 games
2009 played 16 games
2010 played 15 games
2011 played 14 games