GumboBC

Those of you that have been here a while probably can remember me complaining about the offensive line's PASS blocking way back in 2003.

That was the same year Deuce rushed for 1,600 yards.

Anyway, after every game, many folks would come here and begin to tell us why they thought the Saints lost.

And......... just about every Sunday I would complain that the offensive line was doing a terrible job of blocking.

But, many of you would point to the stats Deuce was putting up in the running game. And I'd say that had nothing to do with the PASS blocking.

It really frustrated me that some of you weren't talking about the poor blocking by the offensive line in 2003.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask?

Well, I'm going to try and tie in a few points here...

1. In 2003 we ran an offense that included a fullback and one tighted as our base offense.

2. In 2004 McCarthy deciced he wanted to go to the "spread" offense".

Last off-season many of us dicussed the "spread" offense that was going to be used in 2004. Many of us envisioned a high flying, big play offense.

But, there was ONE big thing that prevented the "spread" offense from being effective.

And that problem was the offensive line.

In 2003 the offensive line didn't look as bad as 2004. But, I believe the reason they didn't look as bad was because the offensive line had a fullback and a TE to help out in the pass protection. And sometimes they even had 2 tightends to help with pass protection.

That wasn't the case in 2004 and we got a very CLEAR look at just how ineffective our offensive tackles were. Gandy and Riley just couldn't get the job done without any help.

Brooks really got killed against some of the better pass rushing teams. The first Buc and Panther game comes to mind.

Even though McCarthy could see Gandy and Riley letting their man come clean to our QB, he insisted on giving them no help blocking.

It really baffled me as to why McCarthy didn't call more max-protect when it was obvious our offensive line couldn't get it done.

Well.....in the last game against the Panthers, McCarthy did go max-protect in the passing game and the Panthers great pass rushers were really ineffective. Peppers and crew didn't sack AB even one time, if memory serves me correctly.

This is kind of long, so bear with me........

I beleive good coaches are good because they can hide their teams weaknesses and play to their strengths. In other words, the good coahes don't wait for 8 or 9 games before they come up with a way to fix a weakness.

Instead of McCarthy going to an offesive alignment that would help our O-line pass block, he insisted on trying to spread the field with 3 and 4 receiver sets.

While have 3 and 4 receivers on the field gives a QB more options to throw to, it doesn't do very much good if your QB only has 2 or 3 seconds to make a decision.

I'd rather have 2 receivers and 5 or 6 seconds to let of of those receivers come open.

This is getting too long, so, I'm going to wrap this up.

Some of you might point out that McCarthy reguarly used a 2 tightend set. But that was mainly in the running game. In the passing game he played the "spread" offense for the majority of the passing plays.

And I believe that might be one reason Haslett was upset with McCarthy.

Thoughts?













[Edited on 4/2/2005 by GumboBC]