From my perspective, I wouldn't say the D kept the Saints in the game, but rather the conservative SF offense kept the Saints in the game. Let's face it, we all know any other team in the playoffs would've gotten 21 points out of 3 turnovers inside the Saints 20. The other 2 turnovers were as good as punts.

But really, I want to focus on what happened not on the last drive, but in the entire 4th quarter. The game is 17-20 at this point. Here's how the 4th quarter played out.

* SF starts at their 28, Saints defense allows a 42 yard run by Gore, SF ends up scoring a FG -- 17-23
* Saints score TD -- 24-23
* SF starts at their 20, Saints defense allows pass plays of of 13 and 37 yards, then a 28 yard run by Alex Smith for a TD, fail 2-pt conversion -- 24-29. That's 78 yards and a TD on 3 plays. That drive had 5 plays total.
* Saints score TD, 2-pt conversion -- 32-29
* SF starts at their 15, with 1:37 left in the game, then the Saints defense allows plays of 7, 11, 47, 6, and a 14 yard TD pass, with 9 seconds to spare. The other 2 plays on that drive were an incomplete pass and a spike to stop the clock.

So, it is not just the very last drive. You cannot allow a team to march 80 yards down the field on 3 consecutive possessions in the 4th quarter. Or even more to the point, in the playoffs, you cannot allow an offense as average as the SF offense to march 80 yards on 3 consecutive possessions and score points in the 4th quarter with the ease the Saints defense allowed the SF offense to move up the field.

Count me in on that "glad GW is gone" number.

One week later and I've moved past the horrible start (falling behind 17-0), the 5 turnovers, and the overall inconsistent play. What I'm still frustrated about is GW’s playcalling down the stretch. We can argue about everything that happened in the first 59 minutes of the game and how we should have had a bigger lead. However; regardless of what happened during the first 59 minutes we had a 3 point lead with 40 seconds left and niners were on their own 33 with only one timeout left. Then the play call that I still can’t get out of my head happened; GW called man-blitz leaving their only offensive weapon one on one with a safety, the next thing you know it’s 1st and 10 niners from our 20 yard line. GW should of learned something from the previous play when he blitzed and got lucky Smith didn't connect with Swain. If Swain was even a decent receiver then that would of been a big play. However, GW put his pride before the team and got burnt on the next play. It is completely inexcusable to lose a game in regulation in that situation, especially against a weak offense. Now I’d be willing to give GW a break if he went prevent defense early in the drive and the niners were moving the ball at will but they weren’t. Against our prevent defense, the niners had moved 18 yards in 57 seconds on that drive up until we decided to blitz. In the NFL playoffs, most games come down to the final 5 minutes and who executes the best. Last Saturday, GW let us down when it mattered most and deserves most of the blame.

The last 5 minutes of this game pretty much summed up GW’s tenure here with us. The defense relies solely on turnovers and heavy blitzes to make stops. When we weren’t getting turnovers or the blitz wasn’t effective we couldn’t make stops. As a result, we gave up a ton of big plays under GW. We spent over half of our payroll in 2011 on the defense but you never would have known it from watching them play. It was time for a change and I’m really excited about Spags being our D Coordinator and feel good about him being able to turn our D around.

we need to get back to technics in coaching players to do there job that been haunting for 2 yrs, spags will bring back that i believe. sf 49ers did what we did in 09 to take the ball away. it really wins games.

I agree. It was a team loss. Defense can't take all blame when there are five TOs in the game from your Offense and Spc Teams.

I totally agree with this, especially the part about spending over half our payroll on D and not getting our money's worth.

The only reason we lost that game was the turnovers. Bottom line.

Yeah, I also think that one has to look at the whole 3 year stint as a whole and not just fixate on the last game - as a whole it wasn't good enough to keep GW around.

It almost seemed to me that since the Saints let Bobby McCrady go, there really hasn't been a sense of the vicious pass rush that carried the Saints through those playoffs, and especially against the Vikes.

Offense takes every blade of grass...... Defense defends every blade of grass. The D has not defended their grass the last 2 years. The offense speaks for itself. Without this O that we have we might get 5-6 wins a year, our D could not win for us or keep a game close without the O. I do agree about the turnovers, but they did happen.

Well said. As mentioned, you have to judge him on his body of work. A lot (me included) called him a one trick pony but I think you can also call him a 1 year pony as well. He changed the mindset of our D in 2009. Don't know what happened after that. This year we had the lockout and I think that may of had more to do with things than we realize.

I'm sort of getting annoyed by all these analysts and stuff defending Gregg Williams by saying that our secondary made mistakes. And I'm not trying to crucify Gregg Williams or anything, but in all honesty his schemes made it very difficult on the secondary to make the best choices. The way we blitzed constantly without getting any increased pressured on the QB left no slack in the secondary and basically made it difficult to make choices due to their often being no additional help.