Mull#5

I think Deuce was defintiely underutilized, particularly on first down. Sure, maybe his ankle was a bit of a problem, but then Stecker could have stepped in on the odd occassion to give Deuce a break. I mean he too can take advantage of those holes, he\'s no Deuce, but he aint a gimp either. I think first down is where i would like to see more running, we keep falling to 2nd and 10 or 2nd and worse than 10 because of a sack or incompletion, i mean even bulling it on the ground for even a mere 2 or 3 yards on first down is better than that.

Danno

I\'d love to see us get 5 or 6 yards on 1st down also. But when teams crowd 8 or 9 players in the box I don\'t care if you have a 27 year old Jim Brown, you aren\'t going to get yards.
The whole problem this year is when teams stack the line we haven\'t made them pay for it. We did against KC. They were forced to back off and the O-line opened holes versus the base D.

The whole 2-TE set thing was supposed to burn teams that stacked the line against us. POOR execution, bad TE play, bad throws, and dropped passes killed the whole plan.

Mull#5

Good point dude. I have to say i personally am not a fan of this two tight end set business, i think it would be good to send that one to the scrap heap.

RDOX

I\'m not a fan of the two tight end set with someone like Deuce as a weapon. One thing that is quite noticeable in this offense is that there is very poor pass blocking. AB ran for his life a couple of times and threw a perfect pic to the defender, while about 3 linemen were draped on him like a cheap suit.

I don\'t credit McCarthy with a damned thing. It\'s about time that we woke up and really saw him for what he is, an amateur pretending to be a coordinator. It makes sense now why Brooks looks so tentative on many plays, he\'s trying to fit his play to what McCarthy called. At least Carl Smith had a few plays down that he relied on. With McCarthy it\'s a crap shoot, and I\'d bet that the reason that you see so much inconsistency is because no one can figure out what formations or plays are being run. Neither McCarthy nor Venturi follow the KISS principle.

What\'s really strange is that the CBS announcers picked up on the fact that we weren\'t using Deuce enough. That was a constant theme throughout the game. Where\'s Deuce? One question that I have about Deuce and this game is whether or not his ankle was bothering him. That could have been a reason that he didn\'t get as many touches as usual, but with this bunch, who really knows? :casstet:

SaintFanInATLHELL

As usual I disagree. You sound just like my brother: just shove it down the defense throat on 1st down.

1st down should always be the mix-it-up down. Every 1st down should show a little something different. Some power running, some passing, some screens, some dump offs, some fullback dives, maybe even a reverse or two. Anything you can think of out of the power or offset I set with base personnel.

Here\'s the reason. If you always run on 1st down then the defense picks up the tendency and will game plan for it. Safeties will creep up. Linebackers will cheat up. Everyone on defense will try to sneak into the box. So as the game goes on it gets harder and harder to run on 1st down.

A balanced attack on 1st down will create indecision on the defenses part. The more hesitation in the defense\'s processing you can create, the more successful the offense is going to be.

In short if you make the defense play Deuce honestly every down, especially 1st down, it\'ll open up the rest of the offense.

Why settle for 3 and a cloud of dust when play action can get you down the field?

Why settle for 3 and a cloud of dust when a balanced attack will open up even bigger opportunities for Deuce in the running game?

Frankly McCarthy power running on 1st down drives me nuts.

Keep the defense guessing, even when the running game is successful.

Of course if you\'re up by 17 and trying the salt the game away in the 4th quarter, then you should pound the ball every down. But even that can set up a big play down the field.

SFIAH

Super Bowl Championships: New Orleans Saints:1, Carolina:0, Atlanta Chokers: STILL ZERO

Only Atlanta choked in an unchokable situation... Life is definitely good.

JKool

I agree SFIAH. Nice post.

St.Shrume

Thank you SFIAH. It seemed that the Chiefs were crowding the line of scrimmage early on, blitzing and trying to close all the gaps. I was actually happily surprised that we didn\'t run the ball twice, then attempted a passon an obvious passing down and then punted.

I thought a lot of people on this board were dissing McCarthy previously for NOT doing exactly that. For being predictable. Deuce is the man, the rest of the NFL knows that and gameplans for it.

I agree with y\'all that later in the game, once we had them guessing, we could have ran it more to take time off the board. But even though at first, I was almost spitting at the TV i was so mad to see Deuce not utilized. But I started seeing what teh defense was doing, and seeing our strategy. Luckily it worked. But it won\'t always. Why? Because our WR\'s drop too many easy passes, so it is very risky to take this approach.

4saintspirit

Actually I think it was about right. A good mixture of run/pass is the best. The saints offense scores many more points on 6-8 play drives as opposed to 12-14 play ones. The longer he drive the more chances the Saints will pull a bonehead drive killing stunt like a holding penalt or a turnover. Look at KC. Blaylock ran for 186 yards but the drives usually ended in penatlies or turnovers. I say let Deuce run enough to open up the play action and keep the drives to a minimum