darstep

I'm just hoping and praying for the best out of our defense.
It would be nice to have a few guys play out of their shoes.
We are still slow to the ball, still don't tackle very well,
still can't seem to actually catch an INT, didn't seal the corners very well.
OK, it was pre-season...vanilla packages and all that stuff.
That's no excuse for bad angles or not making receivers pay for crossing routes.
Williams, Spagnuolo, or Ryan still has to have guys that make it happen.
None of the guys have to make every play. Just the ones in "their moment":
that 3rd-and-7 stop for just 4 yards; something more than "almost" a sack.
Doesn't matter to me how it happens (if it happens);
Inspiration, configuration, or determination, I just want to see it.
That would take a lot of pressure off of the offense to have to score 30 every week.
So far, in the pre-season, I haven't seen it.

**SaintSince67**

DISPLACEDFAN

Thank you I could not agree with you more and that's all I have been trying to say for a couple of days now.
I was beginning to think I had to make a eye exam cause I was watching a different games then everyone else was or if I had glaucoma lol

AsylumGuido

No, you were watching the same "games", if you can call preseason games "games". The final 53 probably played fewer than 10% of the snaps as any one unit and at no time did they operate under the offensive or defensive schemes that will be utilized during the regular season. As fans, there is absolutely nothing valid we can elicit from what we saw either on TV or streaming via computer.

Any evaluation we can attempt will be tainted by what we experienced last season and THAT is about as invalid as one can get. I have every reason to be optimistic about this season because it is about as diametrically opposed to what was experienced last season as one can get.

SaintsBro

I get that. I get exactly what you're feeling. But here's the thing: last year, in the early part of the preseason, under Spagnowedon't, we DID that kind of stuff on defense. We had an interception or two. We had a sack in the end zone, or a safety, we even solved Arizona's QB controversy for them, by knocking out one of their QB's! We sacked Tom Brady for a fumble. The Patriots never even made it across the 50 with their starters. If there was such a thing as a to-do checklist -- Safety, sack, interception, fumble, strip, etc. etc. -- last year's defense did a little bit of EVERYTHING you could ask a defense to do, early in the preseason games.

I thought at the time, hey, this looks pretty good, we might actually be able to beat these suspensions and the missing coaches, the defense could actually be OK. Turns out I was WRONG. I was basing it too much on "big plays" by the defense.

So you can't judge it completely like that. The "3rd and 7 stop for just four yards" -- they definitely had a couple of those against the Texans... I'm too lazy to go back and look it up but they made some stops and held the Texans to some looong field goals out there, instead of what would have probably been easy waltz-in 7-point touchdown drives last year, where they score and the camera cuts to that "oh %$^%$" grimace from Brees on the sidelines.

Thing about the Texans game is, that was a top 10 last year, top 5 this year offense that the Saints were playing against. That was exactly what a preseason game between two playoff teams is supposed to look like. It was a slugfest! It was brutal! And we were actually WINNING the battles and the scoreboard when the starters all came out.