SaintSproles

The Seahawks currently carry only 9 DBs on their 53 man roster.

5 CBs. Two of which won't be available of course for the Saints game.

So they will be forced to play these guys for probably 75 % of the defensive snaps:

Byron Maxwell, 3rd year Clemson
Jeremy Lane, 2nd year NW State (La.)

I expect the Seahawks to play a lot of zone, so I expect the Saints to be scheming for heavy zone defense.

ChromeSeahwk

Go back and watch the final 4 games from last year when both Thurmond and Browner were out and Lane and Maxwell were called into duty. You won't see a lot of zone, and I wouldn't expect to see much this year either. Certainly the Saints have a better passing attack than the teams we played then, but we are built to play press man, and even our backups are geared that way.

|Mitch|

Let's see them consistently contain Moore, Stills, Meachem, or Colston strictly in man. But wait, then you have Graham you have to deal with...

spkb25

Um and there is this little guy out of the backfield...

dizzle88

And then the other guy out of the backfield, that guy with a french waiters name that refuses to go down

ChromeSeahwk

I'm not saying that we are going to lock down all of your receiving threats every play, I'm just saying that our defense is largely built to play press man and to generate quick passes by the QB through a lot of pressure. There will be guys open, it is just a matter of whether Drew will have enough time to get through his progressions to hit that receiver before the defensive pressure gets to him. Drew's a great QB - I expect him to have some success.

Jack Vegas

You wouldn't be the first to try. The Saints generally combat press coverage with flare passes to the running backs. If the Seahawks DB's are going to be up on the line, the Saints WR's are in a good position to block right off the snap. Our WR's are all very good blockers, especially Colston and Meachem. You probably don't want to see Sproles/PT catching the ball out of the backfield 20 times in this game, in a lot of ways those two guys are a bigger threat than our wideouts collectively.

In fact I would say playing man coverage is generally a terrible strategy against the Saints offense. Too many mismatches. Unless you have a DB that can actually cover Darren Sproles 1on1, and another that can cover Graham 1on1, and another that can deal with Colston's size, and another that can run with Stills/Moore. If you had all those players you'd probably do OK in that kind of defense. But nobody does, that is why the Saints offense is so successful for the last 8 years.

Generally the defenses that give the Saints the most trouble play deep zone (avoiding the big play to the wideouts), have linebackers that are really, really good in coverage to the edges (containing Sproles and Thoams to as little YAC as possible) and get a ton of pressure up the middle (taking advantage of Brees lack of height, see Jets defense for an example of this) Even then you will still be looking to hold them to something like 17-24 points, and for once in a long time this year the Saints defense actually has the ability to hold teams to less in most games.

Seattle's big advantage here is home field. I do think the noise factor will hurt us a lot in terms of changing plays at the line and so on. Still, the Saints almost certainly will score 17-20 points at least so the onus is on the Seattle offense to get it done here, IMO.

SmashMouth

But wait... they forgot about Sproles.

Pick your poison, ladies.