WhoDat!656

2. New Orleans Saints

MA: It was an offseason full of turmoil for the Saints as the bounty scandal hit the news and will continue to impact them as the season goes on. The team will definitely miss the play of both Jonathan Vilma and Will Smith on the defensive side of the ball. Those two are key ingredients to the team, but it will be much tougher to replace head coach Sean Payton. It will be interesting to see the mentality of the Saints heading into the season and if they take the us-against-the-world approach that we saw the New England Patriots take back in 2007.

One of the things you can always count on if you are a Saints fan is the play of quarterback Drew Brees. I cannot see that changing anytime soon, even with the loss of guard Carl Nicks or receiver Robert Meachem. Brees may not duplicate his record-breaking 2011 season, but with dynamic weapons in Jimmy Graham and Darren Sproles who could be in for a good year, do not expect Brees to miss a beat.

I do not expect the offense to be a problem for the Saints, but the defense is a different story. Not only will they be without Will Smith and Jonathan Vilma as previously mentioned, but also defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Much can be said about his legacy now that bounty gate has occurred, but few will doubt his impact on the defensive side of the ball. The Saints did alleviate some of the pain in losing Vilma as they went out and signed Curtis Lofton, who will undoubtedly help shore up the linebacker position. Lofton recorded 147 tackles last season and along with newly acquired defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley the Saints should be able to stop some of the game’s better running attacks.

A definite area of concern has to be the secondary for the Saints as they allowed a shade under 260 passing yards per game, which ranked as the 30th in the league last season. Some of that can be contributed to the lack of pressure from the front seven, which will not improve (at least until defensive end Will Smith returns from his suspension). Part of the blame has to fall on the secondary as well. After losing starting cornerback Tracy Porter, the Saints will have to rely on someone to help pick up the slack in the secondary and it could be up to Patrick Robinson. The problems do not stop there as the safety position- mainly Roman Harper- is weak in coverage as well.

With all of the negatives heading into this season it will be tough for the Saints overcome it all, especially considering the heart and soul of the team will not be with them. In the end, I can see the Saints fighting for the last Wild Card spot in the NFC, but in a loaded conference it will be tough for them to sneak in.

Season Projection: 10-6

NFL 2012 Season Preview: NFC South

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."

|Mitch|

So our defense will struggle with the loss of G.W. and Vilma? Guess the author over-looked the Lofton, Hawthorne, and Spags pickups?

ChrisXVI

This is a horribly ill-informed article. I don't even know where to start!

CharityMike

This is going to make this season even sweeter. Nobody is giving us a chance. They all think our D is crap. The crow population is going to get close to endangered after this year!!

Utah_Saint

I really can't take a football writer seriously when he doesn't understand passing yardage per game. He's just taking the ESPN or NFL rankings and drawing the conclusion that the pass defense was 30th in the league.

They gave up a lot of yards because they had a lot of passes thrown at them, 626 to be exact. But when you look at yards/att, the Saints gave up 7.1 which was 14th in the league.

And when you look at completion percentage against, the Saints ranked 9th at 57.8%.

Too many writers don't understand what they're writing about. It only takes a second to look this kind of thing up. Things like this destroy the credibility of the story.

NOLA54

History is just that...history. We will make new history this season. Winning the division back to back & playing in our own hosted Super Bowl.

WhoDat!656

Next time I will try to remember to add the tag of "For entertainment purposes only!"

Vrillon82

Thats been going on all season by media and fans of other teams.

In their minds they believe we still have Williams who is suspended, we got a bunch of players on defense that is suspended (which only hurts us with Will Smith being gone for 4 games), they believe we got worse by letting Nicks and Meachem go (Meachem I dunno about, but Grubbs replaces Nicks).

Theirs plenty more, but that is pretty much what everyone believes.

They believe our HC being gone will hurt us, if it does or not, I dont know, I mean they had no problems replacing HCs down in Indy or Pittsburgh within the last 5 years did they?

Halo

Or next time, just skip it. It's a fan blog written by Patriots fans.
Don't know if you heard but every human being living near Boston or New York or parts of the East coast believe 1000% the Saints are responsible for Bountygate, destroying the NFL, and therefore responsible for the spread of cancer since about the 1800's.

We are to be "shamed" for what we've done.

|Mitch|

Truthfully, I'm not sure that losing Smith for the first 4 games will hurt drastically. From what I've seen from Wilson and Galette, I'm not real worried about it...