Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

Just wish we had been as aggressive during the middle of the game. Graham catches nothing but short passes and dump-offs these days. Remember when he was catching 30 yarders downfield?

I think we have a good run game, just don't want to overdo it.

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

Kind of hard when teams make a concerted effort to stop Grahams big catches. And the one chance he had today he dropped the ball

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

But even that was on the sideline. We are not making plays to the deep middle of the field. That's more what I was getting at.

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

For whatever reason it looks like Payton is trying to get away from those long strike middle of the field passes. Could be because we lack someone to stretch the field, Bree age, Brees injury or who knows. Looks like he is trying a different approach by using short passes and a strong running game as opposed to the blow out big plays. Sometimes you want the big plays, but sometimes you want to be slow and methodical and I think we have the personal to do that. Stout running game, short passes to big guys along with some big plays from Cooks. I like the Pete Carol approach of not throwing too much unless you have to.
Once you have a comfortable enough lead there is no reason to keep throwing the ball leaving lots of time on the clock.

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

Byrd did cause a fumble and turnover in the first game against the falcons so he's responsible for at least one. I do agree though, that both he and vacaro can produce and we should expect more.

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

On a separate note, I don't think pRob played any snaps today. At least I didn't see him on the field. Only noticed lewis, white and dixon playing CB today.

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

White, Dixon, and Lewis played relatively well considering...

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

Every team has issues it's just whose better at covering them up an illusion of some sort

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

I don't think we can fairly assess Vaccaro and Byrds worth on these past 3 games. Even an all pro backfield will look like **** if the guys up front aren't doing their job. People forget that an offensive player has to go through two lines of defense before they even get into the secondary. Crappy linebacker play and a non existent pass rush does not help their cause much.

Re: Love the way Payton finished the game
 

I agree with most of that. I think our linebacker play in pass coverage has been really bad and exploitable. Our linebackers are good tacklers and play the run well but they are just piss poor in pass coverage. They're slow and have bad instincts.

But one problem at a time. We corrected a lot of the CB issues today (put in dixon and white instead of pRob, shortened the amount of cushion we were giving wide outs, aggressive swats at the ball to break up pass plays instead of just trying to make the tackle after the catch, etc)

I think you'll start to see us replace some of our linebackers with the 3 safety look if that keeps up.