SaintsBro

I dunno, Halo, blowing a 20-7 lead, even if they eventually won in the end I think smart people would still be scratching their heads a bit. Maybe people need to realize that Payton is not infallible and doesn't walk on the water.

There was one of the drives in the 1st quarter that stalled out, that had Payton's classic OCD tendencies written all over it. Mark Ingram around the end, for no gain. Brees short pass to Thomas, incomplete. Then you could sense Payton get frustrated, he says $#%$# it, and rather than try a third time for the first down, he has Brees chuck the huge bomb to Morgan, broken up, incomplete. Settled for kicking the field goal, but still. The stall at the end of that drive was solely due to classic Sean Payton impatience. Makes a half-hearted half-baked attempt to run, an easily predictable pass play to Thomas, then screw it, let's chuck the bomb.

DEFINITELY was something about the adjustments, too. I'm not sure what exactly the Falcons did, but in the first quarter the Saints defense WAS getting push and they were getting in Ryan's face a good bit, or at least collapsing in on him as he threw. From the second quarter on, not so much. Maybe the Falcons line were holding, I dunno. It doesn't matter what they did, or what they changed, but it worked.

Halo

@SaintsBro - I agree with you. I actually think Saints forum fans are handling the loss pretty well.

I just can't blame the offense on this one. They put the points up. The INT in the end zone didn't hurt, but the fumble in OT lost the game. Still, they threw the points up and we had no business being in OT. What you described on offense is fixable.

Defense, on the other hand, was out-coached, but outplayed mostly -- or at the very least it was not capable of making in-game adjustments. Our db's were covering in man, it was crossing pattern after crossing pattern that killed us. Safeties were not covering the middle. We could not get pressure on Ryan.

Crossing patterns take time to develop. We simply could not get pressure on Matt Ryan even with a make-shift offensive line the Falcons were sporting.

We finally threw a blitz at them and did get to Ryan, hurried him once and sacked him on the next play. Falcons went to quick hitch passes, but I think the defense should still have thrown bodies at Ryan.

In the end, I was scratching my head thinking "where the hell are Vaccarro and our safeties?" Look, I understand we were double teaming Julio Jones, but seriously, it was like we were missing a player and only playing with 10 on defense.