This is what I asked myself. My hatred for certain aspects of this defense (Gibbs, our fat, overpaid DEs chief among them) tells me yes However, they weren’t totally horrific, just horrible when they really needed to be, which is worse.

As an aside, the conventional wisdom is that we’ll go DB in the draft. The more I read about Gregg Williams, the more I wonder. With his defense predicated on pressure, will he choose to focus on front 7? The secondary will look better when the QB only has 3 seconds to throw. Something to consider…

The Saints, overall, were 8-8: that’s a C.

The offense was the number one offense in football. That’s an A.

If the offense counts for one-half of the overall grade, there’s only one grade possible for the defense.

Offense didnt do the job on some short yardage etc. so I gave them a B

8-8 got the team a C

Defense therefore got a D.

I save F for flatout failure and say what you want about these guys lack of ablitly / motivation ( i know i have ) they DID do the job on occasion. Just not often enough for them to be counted on.

Just look at Drew Brees. The guy is one hell of a great quarterback, no doubt. I firmly believe that our low sack ratio given up by the offensive line is largely due to Brees’ abilities to get the ball out quick and accurately as well as his smart decision making. But consider the games where he did not do as good as usual. The games where he may have not been sacked, but was pressured on just about every time he took a snap and pressured overwhelmingly and successfully. He had to hurry throws, receivers dropping balls that were thrown their way sooner than expected or when they didn’t even expect it due to Brees getting pressured. The games where he threw interceptions, hell I think I can only remember one maybe two of those intercepted passes that he threw that he should not have threw and was just bad choices. The rest were mostly all due to an overwhelming amount of pressure put on Brees. So case in point, QB gets gun shy due to successful pressuring from the front 4 or even 5,6, or 7 and the secondary has more opportunities to get turnovers, or at the very least, better pass defense because they don’t have to stay on their receivers very long in coverage. Obviously with a better pass rush and pressuring scheme, our secondary will look better; they will feel like they are playing better and gain confidence because the ball will not be sailing over their heads so often into a receivers hands who they were trying to stay with for a good amount of time, therefore actually play better. Think about it, when it comes to corners and receivers, receivers almost always have the advantage because action is always quicker than reaction. Any corner trying to match a receiver’s route, cuts, slants, change of direction, will eventually loose coverage the longer he has to stay with that receiver. Take away a fraction of that time due to a successful pass rush and you gain a little more of that disadvantage back.

I agree with Dave and with Mtn and Narco- good stuff. I thought our linebackers did a pretty good job and so did our DT’s, especially against the run. I think our DEs played awful (against the pass mostly) and so did our secondary. The one thing I notice is that better DE play vs the pass means better secondary play vs the pass. But, if the secondary plays well vs the pass, it doesn’t really change that the DEs suck and play poorly. No QB pressure is still no QB pressure.