dberce1

Granted, the first quarter no scoring killed us all year. But guess what, when the D is allowing 437.201 points per game, you can\'t exactly play catch up by grinding the run.

GumboBC

saintwhodi --

Look, you CAN win games and rush for ZERO yards.

But, that\'s NOT the point.

The point is its VERY DIFFICULT to win games when you can\'t run.

But, I\'m sure (or I hope you know) you know this.

If you believe that our lack of production out of the running game didn\'t hurt us ... then, quite honestly, I don\'t know what else to say.

Blame Aaron Brooks for whatever you want.

Blame coaching for whatever you want.

But, don\'t overlook the FACTS.

saintswhodi

I look at the fact the Rams made the playoffs with just 18 more rushign yards than us as a team and the Eagles made it with just 33 more, and are in the Superbowl. Tell me again how difficult it is to win without rushing again? didn\'t the Pats have Kevin Faulk and Antwain Amith for two Superbowl titles? Didn\'t the Raiders make the Superbowl with I can\'t even remember who running the ball? Yeah very difficult. Six of the last 8 superbowl teams have gotten there without strong running games, which included the Rams team the Pats beat the first time out. Only the Panthers last year and the Pats this year had above average running games. Tellme again how important it is.

GumboBC

What to say. What to say. Hmmmm.....

Let\'s start by looking at the top 10 rushing teams in the NFL!!
1. Atlanta
2. Pittsburgh
3. New York Jets
4. Denver
5. Kansas City
6.San Diego
7. New England
8.Seattle
9. Baltimore
10. Green Bay

Out of those 10 teams.. 8 made it to the playoffs.


Now lets look at the bottom 10 rushing teams.

22. Arizona
23. Cleveland
24. Philadelphia
25. Chicago
26. St. Louis
27. New Orleans
28. Carolina
29.Tampa Bay
30. San Francisco
31. Miami
32. Oakland

Out of the bottom 10 rushing teams only TWO went to the playoffs.

And one of \'em (the Rams) only won 8 regular season games and the Saints beat them.

And the only other team who went to the playoffs was Philly.

But, guess what?

Their runningback, Brian Westbrook, rushed for 812 yards, but he also caught 73-passes for 703 yards. In other words, they used the passing game to substitute for their running game. Something we were unable to do.

If you don\'t understand how important the running game is, well, one day you will.

It\'s just not going to be me that going to teach you... cause I\'m out on this one..

yasoon

Okay, first of all any argument FOR McCarthy is going to strike a nerve with me, so I\'ll try not to be a ***** here.
Granted, the Falcons won our division scoring less PPG than we did. They won with defeense which may have been the surprise of the year as bad as their D was last year.

Point? Our D was not good and our O would have been good enough to win with a top 5 defense. But, who went into this year thinking we were going to win with siffling D? Nobody with a freaking clue about football, that\'s who.

Our O was as bad on our D as our D was on our O.
Are you going to excuse McCarthy\'s game planning for that amazing streak of games without a 1st down on our first drive?
You can\'t. Are you going to excuse him for our ineptitude in the 1st quarter? Again, you can\'t. Those are HIS plays that are scripted going into the gameplan and prepared for all week. When the D gave up a TD early, what did the O do? Answer with a score? No. Put the D right back on the field. We knew our D was suspect going in and we needed our offense to carry the load and bail us out of some games. It simply never happened.

You know what game our D lost for us? The Minnesota game. We scored some points and the D made zero stops. I posted this a couple of weeks ago. Look at our losing point totals:
7,10,17,31,17,13,21,21 Thats 17 points a game. Take out the Minn game (which I just said our D lost for us) and we scored 2 TDs a game in our losses. That is unacceptable for the team we trotted out there.

Mike never threw the ball deep and defenses were able to cheat in and pound Deuce silly all year.
Average yards per pass attempt? 15th in the league.
Longest pass of the year? 57 yards in the last game of the season putting us in 26th place

The ESPN article announcing his SF hire says he is known for his vertical game. Thats a JOKE. Period. End of story. He never called bombs all year and it drove me crazy.
Horn\'s Long? 57
Dante\'s? 45
Pathon? 38
Brady topped all of those numbers this past weekened against the best D in the league by going up top.
That is not a vertical passing game and I put alot of it on Mike.

I know AB is not Montana, but Mike did a very bad job of putting him in places to do what he does best. He locked him into a precision passing game where he would have been better going up top. AB threw wild lasers all year and nobody knew where they were going. He never opened up the playbook. (Except in the AZ game where he inserted a reverse using our backup running back....it was a real hit.)

2nd and long? Mike is running.
3rd and short? Empty backfield, with no threat of the run, maybe even shotgun alot of the time. No playaction passes and no power run game.

Mike McCarthy is awful. He has no feel for the game and no ability to adjust. How bout the one game where he ran 12 playactions before Deuce had run the ball 3 times? Pure garbage.

GOOD RIDDANCE MIKE. I CAN\"T WAIT TO SEE WHAT YOU DO WITH KEN DORSEY.

I\'ll be watching and calling all the plays before you run them.

saintswhodi

Sure billy, teach me about the run, then go teach 6 of the last 8 Superbowl teams like I pointed out to you. Noone doubts running is important, but teams have made it to the Superbowl A LOT recently without great or even good running game. Isn\'t Philly in the Superbowl? Nice list. KC and Baltimore not in the playoffs. San Diego, Seattle, Denver, one and done. And Seattle was beat IN THE PLAYOFFS BY A NON RUNNING TEAM AT HOME. Could the Falcons possibly lead the league cause of Vick? I will let you sort that one out. He was only their leading rusher. Nice try bud. But again, wrap your head around this, for the last 4 years, which includes this one, 6 of the 8 SUPERBOWL TEAMS were not running teams. SO try again to explain to me how it can\'t be done without a running game.

Hello. How does this prove your point. If he caught 73 PASSES, they were PASSING right? Deuce had more RUSHING yards than Westbrook, which rushing being the key to winning was your point. So since they were PASSING and not a RUNNING team, they won WITHOUT RUNNING right?


[Edited on 27/1/2005 by saintswhodi]

BayouCajun

yasoon, great post!!!!!

One other thing I notice, On most passing plays during the year there was pretty much only one receiver running a true route, the others were just going through the motions, which made it easy on the other teams defense. That too is a reflection of McCarthy. (Or Brooks only throws to his primary receiver most of the time)

[Edited on 27/1/2005 by BayouCajun]