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Make no mistake, the Saints' historically-heinous performance on defense this season has been indefensible. So it's impossible to dismiss even the more extreme suggestions from growing pockets of a frustrated fan base to either fire coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, dump many veteran players, change the scheme or do all of the above.

The much more difficult task, however, is trying to offer a promising solution - either in the short term or the long term.

There isn't much light at the end of this tunnel. The Saints are staring at some huge salary-cap constraints heading into 2013, which will make an extreme makeover extremely difficult.

ESPN's John Clayton, one of the best in the business at crunching salary-cap numbers, projects the Saints at $16.1 million over the cap next year. And after the Saints back-loaded so many of their new and restructured contracts this past offseason, I did a breakdown that showed the combined salary-cap figures of 10 of their highest-priced players will leap from $37.1 million this year to $85.4 million next year.

So even if the Saints release expensive veterans like Will Smith, Jonathan Vilma and David Hawthorne and choose not to re-sign free agents like Sedrick Ellis, Scott Shanle and Turk McBride, they still won't be able to afford many high-priced replacements.

New Orleans Saints defense deserves to be blown up, but that's easier said than done - New Orleans Saints Football NFL News - NOLA.com

"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."