Utah_Saint

The change from Gary Gibbs over conservative defense to Gregg Williams over aggressive offense was fun from a fans perspective. But I don't think Gregg contributed much to the Saints success while he was here.

I will give him credit for instituting a defensive scheme that allowed the safeties to ball hawk and jump routes, and it really paid off in 2009 but when Darren Sharper left, the Saints didn't have the personnel to take advantage of those schemes. They went from 2nd in the NFL in interceptions in 2009 to dead last in 2010. 2011 wasn't any better, the Saints were second to last in take aways.

Something you'd expect a high blitzing team to be good at would be sacks and pressures. The Saints were terrible at both all three years he was here. The Saints blitzed often but with only limited results and by comparison to other teams, very inefficient.

In 2009 the Saints defense was 25th in yards allowed and 20th in scoring
In 2010 the Saints defense was 4th in yards allowed and 7th in scoring
In 2011 the Saints defense was 24th in yards allowed and 13th in scoring

What really boggles the mind is how bad the Saints have been at run defense. It seems the Saints have done everything they can to help the run defense through the draft and free agency. Will Smith is a first round pick, Sed Ellis is a first round pick, Cam Jordan is a first round pick, Aubrayo Franklin and Shaun Rogers were brought in as run stuffing specialists, and the Saints were still the second WORST at stopping the run, allowing 5.0 yards per carry. Although it's really not surprising when you watch them play and you see how bad they are at the fundamentals; tackling, gap control, getting of a block...etc.

I don't blame Williams for the loss at San Francisco. Any team that turns the ball over 5 times deserves to lose. But he certainly doesn't get any credit since his defense couldn't stop the 26th ranked offense for just 2 minutes.

And in 2010 his defense played very well in the regular season but then gave up 41 points to the Seahawks who average less than half of that (19.4) and was one of the worst offenses (26th) in the league during the regular season.

Gregg Williams defense was an integral part of the Saints 2009 Championship season and for that I'll be forever grateful. But I think it was definitely time to move on.