jjasso007

I reflect on our Saints today and we just aren't a very good team. I think we've become accustomed to being dominant since Sean Payton's arrival and now, having a very bad season, there's a lot of anger going around. Heading into this season, we had 73-39 record with Payton on the sideline. That's a 65% winning percentage. Pretty impressive in this day and age.

So what has happened this season? I know people want to blame Payton and Ryan, but we're still running the same offense and defense from last season. Realistically, our players aren't executing, missing tackles and blowing assignments. Now, that's not a reflection of the coaching staff, but a reflection on the players themselves. The coaches can scheme and put the players in a position to be successful, but once there, they need to execute, and that hasn't happened this season. Injuries have put a huge damper on our season, but age has also crept up, especially on the offensive end.

I had posted something a few weeks back showing the top offensive teams and ours, looking at the Oline average age, and we were by far the oldest Oline. Goodwin, Grubbs and Evans are on the downside of their careers and Colston has significantly dropped off from last season. New blood is needed to shore up our Oline problems, which has become even more evident the last couple games. We can't get any push in the run game and Brees has had even more pressure up the middle.

On defense, our CBs are just not very talented (outside of Lewis), and our MLBs are slow and are a huge liability in coverage. Again, major upgrades need to be made to our LB core and CBs. This won't happen in one off season tho. For this season, however, on offense and defense, we have to play the pieces we have, and right now, they are just either getting old, are not very talented, or are making mental mistakes and having fundamental issues (blown assignments, missed tackles, dropped passes).

Will we be dominant again? Yes. Payton is a great offensive mind. But we need to get the pieces in here for him to be successful once again. Back when we drafted Evans and Nicks to keep a clean middle of the pocket for Brees. We need to get young again and add more youth and speed to our defense. We may be a couple years away from being absolutely dominant again, but we'll get there.

WhoDat