Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

Our defense is atrocious for 58 minutes of these last few games. The decent 2 minutes save our lives and allow our offense to win it for us. It's painful to watch.

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

One comment I heard was that players described Williams' system as "black and white" and Spag's as 'lots of grey area".

To me that means thought, not instinct is required more than before. Therefore, some players are struggling to make the right decisions, taking longer or just not making the right choice and being out of position.

Spags has drafted exactly two of our defensive players, helped sign one and brought over two as well.

My point is that this defense may take longer to develop than we thought.

Rivers and Freeman are not the cerebral QB that Manning is. If our D is 1/2 inch out of position he will exploit it.

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

Peyton's WRs being 2inches taller than our DBs is enough to give us fits.

We will have to play ball control like never before.

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

The first half ended in a sack and the 4th and goal play where Jordan chased down Freeman should've gone down as a sack/fumble, like Spags said in the presser.


Personally, I can't choose either of the choices given, because I think it's a little bit of both. The defensive play may be improving, even though we need to see more games before coming to that conclusion, but I'm finding it very hard to believe that this years' defensive personnel as an unit can become a top tier defense. They need to make some key additions and key subtractions within the defensive personnel during the offseason, and then just maybe next year the defense will be much improved from the get go.

The good thing is that if the Saints' offense is clicking, they don't need a top tier defense to compliment them in order to win games - they just need the defense to make one more big play then the opposition's defense.

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

Our D getting to 1/2 inch out is an improvement of some 2 + yards.
zone defense, let's call it the Shellshock 6 ©, which somehow provides a mismatch AGAINST the Saints - be it a passing play or a rushing play. :confused:

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

Improved doesn't not = Good Enough LOL

I like the shellshock

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

It's like I said before the season started. This team was built to be a blitzing, man to man cover team. Those are the kinds of players we have. I said before the season that I didn't see how all of a sudden we were going to take man to man corners, blitzing safties and linebackers and make them into a zone coverage, four down lineman rush team when they have shown over 6 years that they are not capable of playing zone on the back end and not capable of producing a pass rush from the front 4 without blitzing a safety or linebacker, and here we are. We're making a play here and there over the last 3 weeks but I'm afraid that's not gonna be enough against Manning. I think we need to prepare to be shredded.

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

We just don't have it up front. Thats the bottom line I say it's "B"

Re: Defensive brilliance or luck?
 

Historically bad, legendary, all-time, "worst ever" bad defenses of all time, don't make 4 play goal line stands that turn the ball over on downs after miraculous tackles on the 1 yard line. They certainly don't hold teams to 7 points in the second half, three games in a row. In the second half, the Buccaneers snapped the ball inside the Saints’ 30 yard line 31 times. 31! And amassed a whopping 7 points from all that time mucking around in our half of the field. 8 plays inside the Saints’ ten gained zero points. On the final drive alone, Tampa had six shots inside the thirty in the last minute to play. Nada. One of Tampa's scores earlier in the game, they got the ball gift-wrapped for them on the Saints' 11 with a bow around it. What, as a defense, are you supposed to do with that?

If this defense was really THAT bad, if it were really truly that turrible, we would have lost this game by 14 at the least. They also would have been MUCH WORSE last year, since it was mostly the same people.

Give them credit for the play, or don't - but in the Packers game, somebody on that defense got in there and poked Rodgers in the eye -- the backup QB for Green Bay comes in, and next thing you know, #9 is putting on his helmet and we are back in business again. Stuff like that. Is it a dominating, crushing, commanding performance? Hell no. It is enough, or close to enough? Not really, but it's getting there.

If if it was ALL sheer dumb luck, then it would be a lot worse, noticeably worse -- every quarter would be like the first quarter yesterday, that's all I'm saying. Not claiming that it's brilliant either. Long way from that.