SmashMouth

As expected, ESPN analyst Trent Dilfer had a lot of insightful thoughts on the upcoming rematch between the New Orleans Saints and Seattle Seahawks -- from the reasons why he thinks Seattle’s defense gets away with being so physical in coverage to his belief that the Saints should speed up their offensive tempo the second time around.

Dilfer was in the stadium for the first “Monday Night Football” meeting between the Saints and Seahawks last month. So I was eager to get his thoughts during a Thursday conference call on what he expects the second time around. Here are the highlights from our Q&A:

On whether the Seahawks are as good as any team in the NFL today at disrupting receivers’ routes:

Dilfer: “Yes, Pete [Carroll] and his staff have done a great job in kind of bringing back the ‘80s secondary play. And I know they’re gonna deny this, but there’s no denying it -- they’re convinced that the refs are only gonna throw about 15 flags a game. And they’re not gonna throw all 15 of those in the secondary. So they might get four to six thrown on ‘em. But they figure, if a team’s gonna throw the ball 40 times and we’re gonna get physical 40 times, they’re not gonna call more than six [penalties]. So they’re really playing the odds with how they play in the secondary.

“I mean, it is a lot of roughhousing -- a term we use in the war room, Tom Jackson, [Tim] Hasselbeck and myself. ‘A lot of roughhousing.’ Which is good. I mean, it’s brilliant what they’ve done. But it makes it very difficult, very frustrating for the quarterback and the wide receivers.”

On whether he expects a better effort from the Saints this time around:

Dilfer: “I think the Saints can play better -- I know they can play better. They have some matchups that are in their favor. In fact, I was talking to John Lynch last night, who’s calling the game with Fox, and we were kind of going over notes. And we both agree that the Saints have some really favorable matchups. It’s whether they can get to them.

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