This is a decent aricle
 

This demonstrates exactly what I and a few other posters were trying to say. Defense certainly not good enough, ST not good enough, but the offense had it a hand in losing this year too.


"Drew Brees and Co. produced 234 points in the six games against teams with losing records, a 39-point per game average. But the offense came back down to earth against most of the schedule. The Saints scored 235 points in the 10 games against teams finishing with winning records, a 23.5-point per game average. That's essentially middle of the pack in the NFL."

Saints were stuck in neutral, and no one can escape blame | NOLA.com

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

Said it a thousand times and I will say it again

No matter how good your game plan is or how good your offense is, the best laid game plan will always goes to awry if the entire game, from opening kick off to the final gun is spent playing keep up.

A team is behind the 8 ball if they feel they must put up points on the board on every drive.

It is the recipe for self destruction.

Football is more a mental game than most realize.

Time to get back to dictating the the pace of the game and making teams one dimensional yet again.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

certainly, but that simply wasn't the case the entire season. There were just games the offense completely **** the bed. They actually f'd the defense. Put them in absolutely horrid spots repeatedly with turnovers and/ or couldn't produce points.

Again, we all recognize the defense and ST as the main culprit, but offense holds a good 25-30% of the blame and simply is not due to forcing it in those instances. There were games that forcing it and trying to do too much was certainly part of the issue and then there were games where the offense just didn't do enough or turned the ball over 2-4 times. Many of the turnovers were fumbles and not a result of forcing, just poor play.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

It was indeed a very well written article, not just the comments on the offense..

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

Ok. I see your point here. And it's a good point. And I agree that the offense needs to shoulder some blame as well. Some.

But wouldn't it be kind of obvious that a team will score less against a better team? I mean we can probably pull up that stat for other teams too. Good teams. And they wouldn't score as much against other good teams right? Just playing devil's advocate here.

While i agree the offense had a couple of really ****ty games and essentially **** the bed, as you put it, ST and defense were atrocious.

My point is, there's room for improvement everywhere. But that defense suuuuuucks.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

well that really depends, how much less are we talking, 11 points, 13 points, 20 points. I mean those are just terrible outputs especially when you couple it with multiple turnovers.

In '09 we played a 5-0 giants team and lit the score board up. We played the Patties with 3/4 of our secondary injured and lit the scoreboard up. No I just think our offense, although pretty good this year, and certainly better than the defense most of the time, they're certainly shouldering some blame this year. There were games, and more than just a couple where they put the defense in absolutely horrid positions and they did it multiple times. So yeah defense bigger holes, and ST bigger holes, but offense has some too.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

They're not comments sir, they're called facts. Something you only seem to enjoy paying attention to when they assist your argument. If the offense averaged less than 24 points a game in 2/3 of the games and 40 points a game in 1/3 and those 1/3 came against crappy competition we can certainly see that the offense was not truly as balanced throughout the entire year as thought. Simply cherry picking stats that take performances that are an outlier and skew the overall numbers does not really represent the entire picture as accurately. There are certainly less holes on the offense, but there are holes, have no doubts, there are holes.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

Sigh. Y'all are really arguing a rather useless point. Name one championship team ever that didn't need its weaker side to step up once in a while. Even a number one offense or defense is going to have its down days. Whatever be the factor -weather, motivation, the opposing coach figuring out an in, poor game plan.... whatever, it happens.

Was our O perfect? No, but they did have some sense of awesome about them. However, would they have played every better if they didn't feel like they had to shoulder the entire burden? Would Drew have forced as many throws if he knew he could give getting a first down knowing the ST would pin the opponent deep and the D would get the ball back for him? Would the play caller feel as desperate if he felt the same thing?

I think it was the ST that should be getting most of the middle fingers pointed their way. We easily had a winning record without their constant ****ups. Again, how well would everyone else played if they knew there was a good chance in making a field goal, pinning the other guys deep and even in making and keenly extra point?

Oh yeah, there should still be a large number of other fingers still pointing at the D.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

"A team is behind the 8 ball if they feel they must put up points on the board on every drive."

I prefer the mentality that if your team is UP by 21 points play like you are DOWN 21 points!

The Saints have never had the mentality of putting their foot on a team's throat.

Re: This is a decent aricle
 

If some of you desire some sort of confirmation, here you go

Blame for 7-9

Defense 40%
Special Teams 40%
Offense 20%

That sounds about right to me.