An arguement for McCarthy
 

It seems that McCarthy is going to be the scape-goat this year. But, I think the failures on offense had VERY LITTLE to do with McCarthy.

First of all, McCarthy didn't commit all the penalties. And McCarthy had nothing to do with the last ranked defense we had.

And McCarthy wasn't responsible for us having an awful offensive line that couldn't block.

But here's something else McCarthy wasn't responsible for that I hear hardly anyone talking about!!


And that Deuce. It's no secret that Deuce has been our work-horse for the last couple of years. And its no secret Deuce was being counted on to carry a heavy load this year.

Before I go any further, let me make a statement:

I'm not suggesting in any way that Deuce is at fault here. There were way more problems with our running game than Deuce. But, the bottom line is, our running game was totally ineffective for MANY games.

Because of injuries to Deuce and a terrible offensive line, we couldn't get it done on the ground and were FORCED to go to the passing game in MANY games this year.

Here are those games:


vs. Seattle 16 carries for 57yds. Avg=3.6 yds
vs. 49'ers: 3 carries for 1 yd. Avg=0.3 yds
vs. St. Louis: DID NOT PLAY
vs. Arizona: DID NOT PLAY

vs. Raiders: 24 carries for 42 yds. Avg = 1.8 yds.
vs. Chargers: 16 carries for 63 yds. Avg= 3.9 yds.
vs. Denver:13 carries for 42 yds. Avg = 3.2 yds
vs. Panthers: 7 carries for 22 yds. Avg =3.1

As you can see, Deuce missed 2 games totally. Only had 1 carry against the 49'ers because of an injury. And was totally ineffective against the Raiders, Chargers, Broncos, and Panthers.

That's 8 games in which we got very little production out of the running game.

It's hard to win in this league when you can't run.

And the bottom line is McCarthy can't be held accountable for all the problems in the running game.

IMHO, it really put McCarthy behind the 8-ball. What was he suppose to do? Keep running the ball?

Then I think it really affected our passing games. Teams knew, most of the time, that we HAD to pass the ball.

Between the terrible defense and the lack of production from the running game it really killed McCarthy.

Once Deuce got healthy and the defense stepped up, we never lost a game.

Is that just conincidence?

You be the judge.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

When a team has very few penalties, everyone calls them a well coached team.
Why is that?

While I feel he was the better of our two coordinators, I still feel he had some major problems.

There were many games we simply fell behind in the 1st quarter. You don\'t abandon the run in the 1st quarter because you\'re down 10 points.


I could predict just about every play before we ran it.

After 4 years we still can\'t run a screen pass.

In the red zone you DO NOT run slow developing reverses like we did with Donte.


We have the offensive fire-power to put up awesome numbers. We didn\'t.

We have the personnel to stretch the field deep, we didn\'t.

We went into the season with an O-line that was stacked for run-blocking. They didn\'t.

I\'ve read several reports that stated McCarthy\'s offense was difficult to learn. One highly talented WR wasn\'t even activated all year

[Edited on 27/1/2005 by Danno]

An arguement for McCarthy
 

I don\'t know. But Parcells and the Cowboys had more penalties than us and he called the players stupid.

Since jumping offsides is stupid. I think the player is stupid for jumping offsides. So, I agree with Parcells.

Now, its stupid if the coach lets those players keep making the dumb penalties.

But, McCarty can\'t cut any players. That would be left up to Haslett.

Haslett deserves some blame there. But I\'m talking about McCarthy.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

Sorry Billy, I added this after you replied.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

This is my opinion but McCarthy is the biggest reason why our offense sucked and is one reason why our defense sucked. To me the blame for all the false start penalties does go back to McCarthy. I believe his title is Offense Coordinator, that person is in charge of the offense. If our offense would have given some time for our defense to catch their breath on the sidelines in most of the first quarters our defensive stats wouldn\'t have looked so bad.

I put all the blame of how Brooks plays on McCarthy. He is pretty much the only coach Brooks his been under in the NFL. Brook needs someone else too guide him. I do believe we can win with Brooks, I don\'t believe we can win with Brooks and McCarthy.

Yes, the Saints has a lot of problems to fix, but if they bring in a good OC it will be a great improvement.

Again, just my opinion.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

There are (were) a few arguments in McCarthy\'s favor. I don\'t think anyone will dispute that he\'s done some good things here. The problem is that he\'s done some boneheaded things too.

Point in case: all of 2003 I wanted him to move up to the box in hopes that he\'d get a better perspective of what was really happening. Finally, word comes down that in 2004 he\'s going to do just that. How long does that last? One game. Somehow he came to the conclusion that it is easier for him to radio plays into AB;s helmet from the sidelines than from the booth. One game. :mad:

Another? The 2 TE set as our base offense. HEllo?:iamwst:

Playcalling. So, here we are about to run out the clock on the Panthers and maybe go to the playoffs. The whole world is expecting run, but that shouldn\'t matter. Even a losson the play would subtract 40 seconds off the 60-80 seconds remaining. Plus the time for the punt would run off. Does he call a run. Hell no. He calls a pass which luckily was completed and not intercepted for a TD, but the TE steps out of bounds stopping the clock. It was the only time ALL YEAR that a rruning play up the middle was an absolute necessity and he calls a pass. A pass. :mad2:

An arguement for McCarthy
 

Okay, I have some problems with McCarthy too. But, beleive me, I don\'t blame him nearly as much as some of you.

First: I don\'t think McCarthy is flexible enough. He doesn\'t game plan for particular opponents.

He\'s got ONE game plan for every game. That\'s fine if you don\'t have injuries and you\'ve got your full compliment of weapons.

But, that\'s hardly ever the case for ANY team.

Just look at the Pats, Panthers, etc., ect...

Those teams are able to overcome things we are NOT!!

McCarthy doesn\'t seem to be a good \"game day\" coach.

Again, there were things outside of McCarthy\'s control that contributed to that.

But, he\'s still not a good \"game day\" coach IMO.

He seems to just stick to what he wants to do for too long.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

Just a note. Stecker went over 100 yards in the game Deuce missed against the Rams. He was pretty effective. They still almost lost cause Aeneas Williams forgot how to intercept a pass, but nonetheless. If Deuce doesn\'t play but Stecker goes over 100, isn\'t that an effective running game?

An arguement for McCarthy
 

The Ram game was the ONLY game Stecker was effective running the ball.

Look, you can still want Haslett, McCarthy, Venturi, and Brooks gone and still tell the truth.

And the truth is our running game let us down this year.

Stecker never rushed for over 50-yards in any game but ONE.

When he rushed for the 100-yards, we won the game.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

We also won games where we didn\'t get 100 yards rushing so what\'s the point?

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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.. ;)

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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.

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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]

An arguement for McCarthy
 

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]