New Orleans Saints Answers and Questions

What I saw yesterday was what was missing during the 5 week stretch. The Fire, The Passion, The Spark, The Confidence! And the playcalling was outstanding. They looked re focused.

  I believe they are back on track…..and key word, am very “Hopeful”

Except the Bills and Panthers who are both consistently bad, and one is consistently in a massive steep decline.

So the Saints finally gave me and all the other hard-to-please, perfectionist, “whiny” Saints fans a performance to write home about.

I lol’d at this, professor not happy with me.

Ask me in 2 weeks

I want to see if we can be consistent. In 2008, we were up and down and that is my concern about this year. If we open a can on the Browns, I’ll feel a little bit better and if we play well against the steelers as well, my fears will be more or less put to rest.

Can you please just put a positive spin on everything? For example, the pick Brees threw… I can’t be angry about it because it had such a good spiral.

For me a Breakout game = Saints VS Patriots (2009)

I am patiently waiting to see what the next two weeks bring and although he looked much better I still got a sense that Brees wasn’t totally comfortable. Maybe an aura or something? It seems like he is getting back to the Brees we know with each game. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a lack of confidence in the O line that also seems to be improving? Did anyone else get that or am I reading too much into it (or b/c of my rookie status?)

Maybe the real consistency on this team is that defense is playing well, Brees is getting back to being Brees and there are way too many penalties (although there were a few that should have been called on the Bucs).

When remembering this beat down by our guys, there’s two things that should be considered:

1. The Bucs have a terrible run defense. Their young DTs were clearly outmatched this game. Was our big time running yardage more on their inexperience or was it that our O-line finally got their act together in creating good blocking for our RBs? I’m hoping it was a little of both and not just that their D-line is still a work in progress.

2. How much did Josh Freeman miss center Jeff Faine? I don’t know, so that’s why I’m asking. Their offense seemed shaky all game with bad passes and drops. Their kicker also missed 2 FGs (not that it would’ve mattered).

I’m excited about what I saw yesterday, but am still unwilling to now expect similar performances from here on out. I’ll enjoy this win for this week (and the Falcons’ loss) and hope we keep it going. The Browns are another team with lots of problems. Let’s hope our guys can exploit them. The only Brown that scares me is Peyton Hillis. That dude is a one-man wrecking machine. I’m sure Gregg Williams will be mostly focusing on stopping him.

They really played about as inconsistently last year. The kicking game is the exact same, and last year our run game declined down the stretch, we ran out of CB’s midseason and couldn’t stop the Rams from scoring, we played spectacular nail-biters against the miserable Redskins and the Dirty Birds led by Chris Redman and Aaron Stecker, and we changed from a team that came out of the gate guns blazing to one that took a while to
wake up and had to come back late in games. We just didn’t lose so early. In my mind, the changes are all academic. Chris Ivory fell from heaven like Mana, or Marques Colston all of a sudden, our slow-on-the-uptake 1st round rookie CB has come into his own, and has been replaced by a new “developing” rookie CB, and our defense has gone from letting teams march up and down the field then taking the ball away to playing more solid from the outset and getting stops. The only thing I’m really displeased with(other than losing at he to Hotlanta on what should have been a gimme) is the number of dropped passes by our unchanged-in-3-years WR corps. Brees wouldn’t look so embattled if just half of the drops were converted to gains.

On a side note, how many games with no lost fumbles and 5+ ypc averages does Ivory need before next offseason’s journeyman RB merry-go-round is a 3 horse race?

My elation over their strong showing yesterday is lower on the emotion scale than was my disappointment last week against the Cardinals.

I’m hoping that game (Arizona) served as the wake up call the Saints needed. So far, so good. How well they play against the Steelers, win or lose, will be the biggest indicator of the season regarding how much the real possibility of a repeat exists. For any NFC contenders this year, getting to the Super Bowl is probably going to be easier than winning it.

until we can get PT back—and after for depth. I think that is the key to the offense along with play calling. In the Vikings game we went pass happy to long before returning to up the middle runs and balance. We have to try to run it anyway even if Ivory does get bottled up. Overall, the Saints have been playing well and in every game. Just win baby I say and get a kicker that can kick chip shots. If you are missing thirty yard field goals, you gotta go.

I need to see more consistency before i jump back onto the “everything’s back to normal” ship. I don’t feel as good as I did last year about the Saints but this was a really good step in the right direction. A couple more and I’ll feel alot better

or does it seem like we can’t get the takeaways like we used to? I know our D is looking really good, but where’s the takeaways I’m used to seeing our D get? And where in the hell is Will Smith? I think he had limited play this week, but what happened to the 13.5 sacks he had just 1 year ago? Don’t get me wrong, I love my Saints and I’m glad they actually showed up to play this week. It makes me so proud to know that they can still put up 30+ points. And boy, did Ivory have one hell of a game or what? That makes me feel a little better about our RB situation.

Thank you for enlightening me.