saint need to make a couple of trades
 

i think the saints need trade both their second round picks for
McKienze and Samiri Rolle,, then the secondary is good for sometime ...
cant always look towards the future gotta go for it now...
2 second rounders is a step price,, but atleast u know what players
they are without having to guess draft time....

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

IF we did that we are going to find ourselves in cap trouble in a hurry.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

You keep talking about cap trouble... I thought we were $11 mil under the cap?!? (that\'s the figure I\'ve read recently) It seems to me that all that room under the cap does us no good if we don\'t use it to pick up good players. Now, I\'m not saying that McKenzie (who I think is lucky more than good) or Rolle (Gettin\' up there in mileage) are the best uses of our moo-lah, but I think we should entertain the idea.

The notion that we should just \"line up with what we\'ve got\" is asinine. Didn\'t we buy that line last year? We said last year that we needed to shore up the D, especially the CB\'s, and we didn\'t. We got Sully, who (looking for silver linings here) gave us the ability to jettison the Big Wiggle and Gravy Jackson, but obviously was not the answer. The only reason our pass D looked better on paper was that no one needed to risk INTs or dropped passes when they could hand the ball off for 4-6 yds per carry.

So, let\'s get some help on D. Trotter would be nice, McKenzie/Rolle if nothing else better is out there, or trade draft picks for Ty Law (or Sullivan + draft picks for Law if he keeps up the Gravy Jackson routine).

I\'m glad we\'ve got a whole corps of WR\'s - we\'re gonna need \'em to put up enough points to bail out our D...

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

Edit: I\"m going to post this same post every time someone makes this statement until someone can provide me with some evidence showing other wise. :P There were a bunch of folks saying this samething in the past.

I agree we should try and upgrade our team whenever possible. Providing its a good deal. But, I disagree on the above statement.


I think it\'s a natural assumption for some to think because our run defense gave up a lot of yards that it helped our pass defense. Especially when there are a lot of the media folks going around preaching this stuff without ever really looking at the situation a littler deeper.

Let me try and explain how our poor run defense did NOT help our pass defense. Hopefully, this will put an end to all these myths.

Here\'s the thing about our run defense. We were ranked 31st in the NFL at giving up runs of 20 or more yards. We allowed 16 runs of 20 or more yards. That\'s next to last in the league, by the way.

To put that into perspective:

Runs of 20+
New Orleans 16
Tennessee 2
New England 2
Baltimore 3
Dallas 5
Miami 5
Buffalo 5
Jacksonville 5
Carolina 8

What does this have to do with anything? Well, it means that a LOT of the yardage given up on the ground was in large chunks.

The yardage given up by our run defense is kinda misleading.

For large portions of games, teams weren\'t running the ball that effectively and controlling the clock. Which is ONE of the reasons our defense was on the field less than Jacksonvile.

Saints=29:46 defense on field
Jaguars= 29:51 defense on field

The Jaguars just didn\'t give up as many LONG running plays

Saints 20+ = 16
Jaguars 20+ = 5

To once and for all put an end to the myth that our run defense helped our pass defense. Consider this:

Pass attempts per game against Saints defense = 30.3

That\'s the 7th fewest in the league. And that\'s what everyone wants to point to and hang their hat on.

However, do you know how many passes were thrown againt the team who was passed on the 8th most in the NFL??

It was 33.1 pass attempts per game(Miami Dolphins). Which is a WHOPPING difference of 2.8 more pass attempts per game. That\'s hardly enough help a pass defense out.

Bottom line is our pass defense was passed on 30.3 times per game and it really wouldn\'t have made a difference if teams would have rushed for 1-million yards per game. It\'s how many times teams attempted to throw the ball against our secondary that counts.


And for final proof that our secondary was passed on as much as just about any other team in the league:

Team/ Pass att. per game
Indianapolis 27.8
New York (A) 28.4
Oakland 29.2
Tampa Bay 29.7
Washington 30.2
Pittsburgh 30.2
New Orleans 30.3
Dallas 30.8
Denver 30.9
Arizona 31.1
Cleveland 31.4
Houston 31.4
Buffalo 31.8
Atlanta 31.8
Cincinnati 31.8
St. Louis 31.9
Jacksonville 31.9
San Francisco 32.1
New York (N) 32.4
Carolina 32.6
Detroit 32.6
San Diego 32.8
Chicago 32.8
Miami 33.1
Baltimore 33.2
Minnesota 33.2

[Edited on 4/6/2004 by GumboBC]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

I am so confused after reading all your great research and beating my own head on the wall. Hell we my be arguing the same point but here we go...

The Saints had 264 pass att againts them all year which was second fewest to Dallas at 239. Second fewest, but we gave up 12 yards per rec thats fourth worst, right, ouch. To me thats not needing to throw alot to get your yards.
Now 30.3 thats 7th fewest but the most was New England with 38.6, you said Miama was 8th most with 33.1 but the fewest was the Colts with 27.8 NOW
from 7th fewest to fewest is 2.5
from 8th most to most is 5.5
thats a difference of 3
when you are giving up 12 yards per rec thats a big difference thats 36 yards per game add that to the end of every game we won by 3 points or less and tell me 36 yards might not have made a difference.

Now rushing
we had the 8th most att per game with 30 with the 4th worst average with 4.7
if you add that to the 1012 penelty yards for the season you\'ll get a 5.2 yards per play

All I\'m saying is why pass it for 12 yards a play when you can run it for 4.7 and rest your Defense. We should be glad we went 8-8 from all this crap I just read we should have gone 3-13

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

For the record, that statement is incorrect. Our defense was passed on 485 times. 264 was the number of COMPLETIONS. It\'s just our pass defense only allowed a completion rate of 54.4% which was 4th BEST in the entire NFL.

Yeah, it was kinda confusing, I admit.

To put it simply, our defense was passed on 30.3 times per game. That\'s as much or within 1 or 2 passes per game of just about EVERY other defense in the NFL.

How many times does our defense need to be passed on to prove itself? 40? 50? How many times?

Look at the pass attempts per game for these other teams:

Indianapolis 27.8
New York (A) 28.4
Oakland 29.2
Tampa Bay 29.7
Washington 30.2
Pittsburgh 30.2
New Orleans 30.3
Dallas 30.8
Denver 30.9
Arizona 31.1
Cleveland 31.4
Houston 31.4
Buffalo 31.8
Atlanta 31.8
Cincinnati 31.8
St. Louis 31.9
Jacksonville 31.9

About the same, right? I could care less how many times a team rushed the ball on us. It isn\'t hard to understand that when a team passes the ball 30.3 per game and our pass defense is ranked 8th in the league that it can\'t be that bad.

Bottom line is you can\'t say our defense wasn\'t passed on any less than most any other team in the NFL.



[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

P.S. -- Here\'s the ranking in some of the more important catorgies......

Saints pass defense:
Yds per game = 197.8 - Rank 8th
TD allowed = 20 - Tied for 9th
20+ yds allowd = 38 - Rank 9th
40+ allowed = 2 - Rank 2nd
Comp % = 54.4 - Rank 4th

[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

See here is a problem, 12 yards per catch is 4th WORST in the league! Thats bad.
And yes the yards are gonna down on the passing side of it when the are running for 140.1 Yards per game at 4.7 yards per run
I do understand that the passing stats are down but I watched every game and seen the plays and can say to you SIR our CBs suck, you get a led and run the clock out. Thats how they do it now. WHY PASS WHEN YOU ARE GETTING 4.7 YARDS PER CARRY.
Here is something else to ponder, out of 264 COMPLETIONS only 99 were stopped short of a first down, the least, by far in the league.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

First things first. You want to say because our pass defense allowed 12 yds per catch that they sucked....

Take a look at these teams average yds per catch. It\'s mighty close. Do they all suck?

Team/Avg. yds per catch
New Orleans 12.0
Minnesota 12.0
Dallas 11.8
Washington 11.8
Denver 11.5
Tennessee 11.5
St. Louis 16 11.4
San Francisco 11.4
Jacksonville 11.2
Miami 11.2
Indianapolis 11.0
Pittsburgh 11.0
Green Bay 11.0

So, I think that shoots that arguement down.

Our secondary had a couple of bad games. But, for the most part they played solid.

And our run defense had nothing to do with it. Teams could have rushed for 10.0 yds per carry, but it did not change the fact they passed on us 30.3 times per game.

Yes, we could be better, but we could certainly be worse.

Edit:

That\'s an incorrect statement also. Let\'s compare that to some of the best defenses in the league. I included the Redskins cause they have 2 probowl CB.

Team/att/comp/1st downs allowed
Carolina/ 522 /299 / 161
Washington/ 483 / 285 / 176
Jacksonville/ 510 / 303 / 172
New Orleans/ 485 / 264 / 165







[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

Yes, yes I do.
12 yards per catch is at the very bottom of the league, bad enough to have you edit your post?
Lookthe difference between 12 YPC and 11 YPC is the difference between 4th worst and 7th best in a league of 32, big swing.
Now I\'m not saying the DBs are responsible for everything, cause 4.7 YPC is not satisfactory. 140.1 YPG is plain rediculus. So please dont take it the wrong way.
If ya say 12 is the same as 11 and they throw the ball 30 times a game thats 30 yards, right? Then you say 30 and 33 att is the same at 12 YPC thats 36 yards, right?
Now 30 + 36= 66. 66 yards per game you are not seeing, and if I did not see 66 Yards Per Game I guess Iwould think our DBs are good enough to have another 7-9 or 8-8 or look out 9-7 season.
But I aint, we need to spend some money to make some money. Get a CB and lets push into the playoffs a little further this year, if ya\'ll want to.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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....................

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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...

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

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]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

SaintFanInATLHELL --

That was one GREAT post. And it\'s what I\'ve been trying to say. How anyone can think that getting a couple of shut-down corners is going to magically solve are problems is misguided, IMO.

A couple of points you make are very good and I feel EXACTLY the same way.

I could not agree more.


Now, that\'s exactly the way I see it. That\'s the only way you can look at it.

SaintFanInATLHELL - Great post. Keep \'em coming :thumbup:




[Edited on 5/6/2004 by GumboBC]

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

Wow. Lots of good posts. This is the kind of intelligent arguing that keeps me coming back to this forum. Excellent comments and statistics, and all without name-calling and angry typing.

I certainly can\'t compete with all of the statistics and insight that has preceded this post in the thread, but I want to give my opinion. So here goes.

The fact that we gave up so many runs of 20 yards or longer is horrible compared to the low numbers of other teams. I also think that this stat is important for the point I am getting to:
20+ yds allowd = 38 - Rank 9th
40+ allowed = 2 - Rank 2nd

The difference between those rankings shows that our CBs played solid coverage, and/or that our pass rush was good enough to pressure the QB before their recievers could get that far downfield. Sure, we don\'t have a big name corner, but we have corners who play hard. It wouldn\'t hurt to have a \"shutdown\" corner but Thomas, Brown, Craft, and Ambrose are a decent combination and provide a set of servicable players, barring injury. To be honest, our lack of depth at safety concerns me more. We don\'t really know how good of a player Mel Mitchell is no matter what Haslett says about him. I think we let Victor Green go. The only consolation is that Cie Grant and/or Craver can probably be converted to safety if they have to be. As far as the Dline goes, it seems to me that we have as much or more talent and depth as any team in the league.

All of this brings me to my original point. The problem with our defense has been our linebackers. The runs of 20 yards or more seems to show this. If a running back got 5 - 10 yards from the line of scrimmage it was basically up to the backfield to tackle them. This is reflected in the fact that Jay Bellamy and Fred Thomas led the team in tackles with 20 more than the closest linebacker. Our linebackers just didn\'t seem to be instinctive enough. I\'m hoping that Courtney Watson will begin a turnaround with our LBs. From what I\'ve seen/read about him he has that football instinct combined with intelligence and athleticism. I\'m hoping James Allen will turn out to be a pretty good outside linebacker, he seems the best of the \"potential players\" at that position.

I\'ll leave you with this.

85 Bears
LB Mike Singletary
LB Otis Wilson
LB Wilbur Marshall

90 Giants
LB Lawrance Taylor
LB Pepper Johnson
LB Leonard Marshall

Dome Patrol
LB Sam Mills
LB Rickey Jackson
LB Pat Swilling
LB Vaughn Johnson

Now can you quickly name the starting CBs from each of these teams?

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

The only CB I can remember during the Dome Patrol days was Toi Cook...and if memory serves me correctly, he was burned more than Michael Jackson filming a Pepsi commercial.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

I liked Toi Cook but he wasn\'t a shut down CB... and the LB\'s we had were not great but together they were.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

Amen to that. Lest we not forget Massey and Maxie. Ouch. The only good secondary players we ever had on those great defenses were Gene Atkins and David Waymer.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

It\'s been said many times already but I\'ll say it again.....Pass Rush!!!!!!!!! That will make even a average DB look better than what we had last year. If our pass rush is what it should be (please help MR. Pease) then our secondary will stand a better chance of covering someone. No one can cover a receiver all day long. If you allow the QB to have all day to sit and look the field over he WILL find someone. PASS RUSHthat\'s what we need more than any specific corner back!

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

I can name the corners from your post but I get your point. Billy I agree that shutdown corners are not a necessity to a good defense. It all depends on the scheme you are running as well as the offense you are defending. The key ingredient in the three teams you mentioned was pocket pressure. All three of these teams ran a defense geared around backfield disruption and QB pressure through unpredictable blitz packages. All three also had a similar weapon of a dominant edge rusher. Perhaps Will Smith can be exactly that. It appeared to me that Rick Venturi\'s style is simply too conservative and he attempted to band aid our lack of competency in coverage with soft schemes designed to allow short to medium yardage plays and minimize long gains. Our lack of tackling consistency did nothing to make this better. In allowing offenses the opportunity to move the ball effortlessly within this range, we allowed lasting drives. As Coastalkid stated, we need to force QB\'s and the entire offensive backfield and make them react to us, not the other way around. If nothing else we should have a youthful front 7 that should be allowed to use that athleticism to attack the line of scrimmage with the potential of creating big defensive plays. Our corners will get beat at times but we will also stop more drives with turnovers, offensive penalties and sacks on 3rd down.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

My only response to all this defense talk is this....
Saints 2003 regular season tackles:

Jay Bellamy 94
Fred Thomas 85
Derrick Rodgers 74
Orlando Ruff 69
Tebucky Jones 69
Darrin Smith 60
Charles Grant 57
Ashley Ambrose 47
Kenny Smith 42
Willie Whitehead 40

I only included the top 10 to illustrate this fact....our top two tacklers last year were DB\'s. Shouldn\'t a linebacker or D-lineman be leading in this regard? What this tells me is that our D-line and linebackers can\'t tackle and we had waaaay to many RB\'s being tackled by our secondary....4-6 yards downfield.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

Dlinemen never lead a team in tackles. Their primary job is to plug holes. A linebacker SHOULD be the leading tackler, though it is not uncommon to see a safety with a whole lot of tackles b/c they often come up in run support and accrue tackles in the defensive backfield as well.

The key to all of this is the running game. I think our DBS are hurt by the fact that they have to contribute to stopping the running game so much. If we can stop the running game with our front seven, we\'ll be fine. If we have to put a safety in the box, we\'ll be in trouble no matter how well we rush the passer. That was Knight\'s undoing in NO. His \'lack of speed\' was only \'exposed\' b/c he was often outrun b/c he only started 7 yards off the line of scrimmage instead of the 15 yards deep a safety normally plays.

saint need to make a couple of trades
 

You are on the money. When you lineman and LB\'s are stopping the run they get more tackles. When you DB\'s lead the team in tackling the front 7 are not getting the job done.