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After Wednesday’s practice concluded, and the rest of the Saints were back in the locker room showering and getting dressed, cornerback Keenan Lewis walked out to a side field and began putting in work on a blocking sled.

No, he wasn’t worried about tuning up his blocking technique. He was using the sled to practice his tackling form. The image said everything you need to know about the Saints’ mentality this week after missing at least a dozen tackles during Sunday’s overtime loss to the Falcons.

“That’s something I want to emphasize on,” Lewis said. “In practice sometimes you don’t get enough of it. Just wrapping up is something I’m trying to work on this week.”

Even though the team has moved on to preparing for this week’s opponent, the Cleveland Browns, many members of the defense still have a bad taste in their mouth after letting last week’s game slip away.

The defense some time working on tackling during Wednesday’s practice, which is not entirely out of the ordinary, but coach Sean Payton said there is added emphasis on fundamentals this week.

Still, even though the defense believes they can clean up the mistakes and improve, it will take a clean performance before the players can move beyond the issue.

“I had a hard time sleeping this week because of the film we put out there,” safety Kenny Vaccaro said.


Read more: Keenan Lewis working overtime on tackling techique | Saints | The Advocate — Baton Rouge, Louisiana

dizzle88

Every member of the defense should be doing that rather than spending the whole offseason tweeting about how good they are

saintsfan1976

Nite nite Cleveland....

Danno

If there's any justice in the football world Cleveland won't get 200 yards against us.

dizzle88

I really hope we get back to basics on D, what worked for us last year

On obvious passing downs, man coverage on the outside receivers, Byrd playing around where the first down marker is and reacting rather than 20 yards downfield
Vaccaro in the slot due to the 3 safety set we have on the field

As horrible as it was to watch the game vs falcons, I think it showed us two things that led to our downfall

Scheme and tackling - both can be corrected

we had the falcons pinned at their own 6 yard line, we played zone and byrd was about 20 yards back, julio jones ran a 10 yard corner route and picked up 23 yards
If someone gets a better jam at the line or at least is close to him, that doesn't happen and the falcons punt

If we had tackled better, I don't think the falcons break 20 points

Your bonehead creator picked a fine chapter to omit from your memory bank....let me ask you, does a machine like yourself ever experience fear? - Vegeta, DBZ

saintsfan1976

The more I read, the more I realize this was first game mistakes for our defense.

No more, no less.

Except for Robinson and Hawthorne whom I believe will continue to plague us

hagan714

face mask in the middle of the numbers. wrap up and drive through. what is so hard about it? snot knocker hits are great at causing turnovers

Mardigras9

True, but at some point maybe before Atlanta hit the 400 yard mark, you would think they would make some type of adjustments. The defense has some serious cleaning up to do.
Not sure if they just underestimated Atlanta, bought into the hype, or just had a terrible first game. Guess we'll see this week.

saintsfan1976

All above

Beastmode

Tackling is not like riding a bike, players seem to lose the skill for some reason. Hoping others follow Lewis's lead and get some extra work in.