GumboBC

I\'m not showing the stats to say we were a superior pass defense. I\'m saying that we weren\'t terrible.

One thing you\'re not taking into consideration is how bad our pass rush was. We were getting no pressure on the QB and our secondary had to cover receivers forever. Don\'t you think most secdarys would suffer in the same situation?

Think back to the dome patrol days. Who were our CB then? Look at Carolina\'s cornerbacks. They were helped by a great pass rush. Now look at the Redskins secondary with Smoot and Baily. The redskins secondary did worse than ours.

I\'d love to upgrade our secondary, but I don\'t think they played terrible last year and I think if we can get some pressure on the QB (which I think we will) that our secondary will be much better.

I also thing Jason Craft will do just fine.

no_cloning

Just a few quick hits why you can stop about trading Sullivan:
1. Do you really think the people responsible for drafting him and trading away 2 first rounders for him will now trade him away to another team? Rule number one: Never ever admit you made a mistake (we should have learned that from the president & his gang - but that\'s a whole different story)
2. A second year player with a less than stellar rookie season doesn\'t have a lot of trade value. For sure his trade value is less than his potential (I haven\'t given up on him)
3. When a player is traded, his entire pro-rated signing bonus that remains must count in the year he is traded. Even with 11 million under the Saints could get into cap trouble quickly that way. Sullivan would count at least 6 million against the cap without being on the team. If the team signs Law, they\'ll be right at the cap.

Talking about trading Sullivan is as foolish as the \"trade Brooks for the Chargers No. 1 pick\" that was going on here earlier. We can discuss options, but let\'s keep it reasonable.

Euphoria

I don\'t think he is a bust just yet... give him sometime to develop and a good DL Coach and then lets see... I say we are going to hang onto him for at least another 2 years.

bjd9044

GumboBC, look I\'m not trying to say they were the worst ever either( although I may have screamed it out a couple times the last couple years). But its not good to see every other pass thrown, caught for a first down. The D- line has been bad, but they are at LEAST young,we do have 4 first round picks and Howard in the last 3 or 4 years there. Either we should draft a Corner or change our way of picking D - linemen, right. I to think Craft will be O.K.
In the Nickle, with Thomas at 2, and the new CB at the 1( in my opinion thats McKenzie)then its deep into the playoffs we go....................

Brad\'s FootBall is Saints News and Message Board
[url]http://bradsfootball.sports-reports.com/[/url]

GumboBC

bjd9044 --

First, let me say you have brought up some very good points. Especially about the lack of depth at the CB position.

I think we\'re OK going into the season with Thomas and Craft. They are not eltie CB, but I think both are solid. But, after that, we look like we might be in trouble if Ambrose or one of the other CB had to start for an extended period of time.

I do think we need to add another CB in case one of our starters gets injured. Hopefully that will be McKenzie. Personally, I don\'t think the Packers are going to trade him, but we will see. Maybe there will be someone else that comes along and we can pick him up.

One thing I\'m counting on is our front 4 being able to generate a strong pass rush. Last year our pass rush was non-exsistent for the most part and it placed additional pressure on our secondary to play tight man-to-man coverage.

Hopefully, we will be able to play more zone coverage and our pass rush will force the issue with QB\'s and our secondary won\'t be as vulnerable as it was last year.

Very good points bjd9044. Glad to have members such as yourself on board. :thumbup:

[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]

SaintShreve

Wow, are you kidding me GumboBC. I\'ve been away from my CPU for a couple of days... but dang! You are proving Mr. Twain to be right when he said that statistics are \"lies, damn lies...\"

I invite you to watch each and every Saints game again (God knows I have). I invite you to remember John Fox and Jack Del Rio both saying late in the year that the Saints wouldn\'t need to cry about \"bad officiating\" if they had simply stopped the run.

As far as yds per catch stats go, those are misrepresentative as well. I don\'t have the \"numbers\" you want, but I can tell you, from a fan who watched the Saints from Direct TV every week (because I lived in Nashville for 3 years), AND watched most of the other games as well (thank you TiVo) - opposing offenses punished our CB\'s and our D as a whole on screen passes. Many, many, many times. Screen passes don\'t go for as many yards on every play as 5-7 yd slants do, but when our CBs are poor tacklers (yes, I am speaking of Ambrose, Carter, and Brown), then 2 yards screens tend to go for 12 yds (interesting... that was the average we gave up).

Only five teams gave up more yds per game than we did on the ground (Jets, Falcons, Chiefs, Texans and Raiders). That makes us the SIXTH worst run D in the league. Now, answer me this - if you were a coach and knew you could get 4.7 yds per rush (FIFTH worst in the entire league), why would you make risky passes in the 5-10 yd range? Well, Virginia, they didn\'t - watch the game tape. A disproportionate number of passes against our D were screens and bombs.

Also, since you like the stats... review the six teams who had fewer pass attempts against them per game last season than us. I find it interesting that most of the six were notable for being porous against the rush last year (and before you counter with Tampa, remember how we typically beat them).

Here\'s the deal. I love the Saints, and obviously so do you. But I think the offseason has given you warm fuzzy thoughts about our D. We were not as bad on D as 2 years ago - this is true. We were not as bad as Atlanta, or Oakland, or Arizona or Detroit. But in a game of inches, 3 pass attempts per game and 1 yard per catch can make a difference. We need a D-line that shows up, CBs that make QB\'s think twice about passes to the flats and LB\'s that can close on and finish plays - and none of those things happened with any consistency last year. The only reason we finsihed .500 last year was a 5-3 finish where we beat teams that had given up or didn\'t show up (Giants, Cowboys, Redskins) and lost the games we needed (Eagles, Tampa #2).

There are no stats that define effort, intelligence and instincts. If there were, I\'m sure that we would place towards the bottom of the league in all of these...

Every man knows he is a sissy when compared to Johnny Cash...
- U2\'s Bono

GumboBC

SaintShreve --

With all due respect, I think you are suggesting our defense is MUCH worse than it was. You make it sound as if teams were just passing at will and putting up TD after TD on our pass defense.

If stats don\'t count for anything, then how about the score board? If in fact our pass D was so bad, then how was it that our defense held opponents to 20 or less points in 11 games? Did they try to NOT score? And one of those games went into overtime.

You want to look at our CB and say they were the BIG problem. I don\'t think that\'s the case. I think, while they didn\'t play great in some games, that for the most part they played solid, as the score in most of the games suggest. Peyton had a great game. McNair had an average McNair game. As did McNabb. Besides that our pass defense played well. And they held teams to 20 or less points in all those games despite the fact that we had several starters out and had virtually no pass rush. Pay no attention to the stats, but I\'ve heard it said many times that the score is the ONLY thing that counts. I think the score suggests that our pass defense wasn\'t that bad. Unless teams weren\'t trying to score. And, yes I watched the games too.....


Seattle -27
Tennessee -27
Indianapolis -55
Phil.-33
Carolina -23 (OT)
Carolina 19
Houston- 10
Chicago - 13
Atlanta - 17
Tampa Bay- 14
Atlanta- 20
Wash.- 20
Tampa Bay- 14
NY Giants- 7
Jax - 20
Dallas - 7


[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]

bjd9044

Well if we do not make a deal to get a \"GOOD\" corner I hope you are right.
I guess its true some people do look at the cup as being\" half full\"
Good luck Shreve..............Thanks Gumbo, I enjoyed it

SaintFanInATLHELL

Hi guys,

I\'ve been lurking for close to a year. But I think this is the thread that I\'ve been waiting to get into.

GumboBC has been trying to make a point that I haven\'t yet seen refuted: Defenses in the league last year with much better corners than the Saints have haven\'t done much better statistically or in the W column. So why is the thought process simply that getting \"better\" corners will somehow magically solve the problems with the defense?

Personally I think that the breakdown is in the defensive coaching scheme. Venturi seems to be afraid of giving up the big play. But as the stats clearly bear out, the Saints gave up big plays all day long last year in both the rush and pass game. I\'m pretty sure that better corners are not going to fix that.

The way I see if the Saints defense needs to Keep It Simple: Stop the rush then blitz the pass all game long.
The problem I saw with the ineffective rush defense is that it set up 2nd and 3rd and short yardage all the time. That\'s prime winning down and distance for opposing offenses, especially an offense that has had success rushing and passing the ball during the course of the game. So the defensive scheme has to be set up to stop the run game.

So my question is this: In your opinion have the Saints with both personnel and scheme improved their ability to stop the run and to rush the passer effectively?

I can\'t see where or why corners fit into this question. However the addition of Young, an improving Sullivan, Grant and Howard on the ends, and WIll Smith as an XFactor off the edge, along with what we all hope is an improved linebacker core may hold some answers.


SFIAH

Super Bowl Championships: New Orleans Saints:1, Carolina:0, Atlanta Chokers: STILL ZERO

Only Atlanta choked in an unchokable situation... Life is definitely good.

GumboBC

One final thing and then I\'m done... :P

The stats I was using was to show that our pass defense was passed on 30.3 times per game and while that might be 7th fewest in the league. It wasn\'t but 1 pass per game off of what other pass defenses were passed on. That\'s just the simple truth. Would have one or 2 more passes per game have made that much difference? Sure it would have made some difference, but not much.

And, I\'m not suggesting that our CB are great. I think Fred Thomas is a good solid starting CB in this league. Ambrose is NOT. But, we have Jason Craft now and we\'ll see how he does. It seems like some of you are just writing this guy off?

Also, I\'m one who thinks the front 7 is where it starts. IMO, I think average CB can thrive when you have a strong front 7. I think Carolina proved that. As did our dome patrol defense.

Great CB are not needed. Solid CB are. I think we have that. Could I be wrong? Certainly. We\'ll see who is right.

[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]