Comments on: Week 8 Recap: No Treats For You

By: Jesse K

Jesse K — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:06:21 +0000

Actually the author Chris is wrong and a lot of people dont realize this but the Saints are actually down to their 5th and 6th string RBs not 3rd and 4th. People that havent been following the team only see Bush and Thomas hurt but the truth is their real backups were L. Hamilton and P.J. Hill and both got hurt in preseason and are lost for the year, so they had to throw Ivory into the mix WWWAAYYY before they wanted (he would have been on the practice squad at best) and sign Betts off the street just to have some RBs to play. Add that with the fact they are playing 4th and 5th string CBs and i think you will start to understand why the Saints havent looked as dominant as last year. There’s a reason why those starters get paid all those millions and when you go from that to a guy who wouldnt even be in the league without 4 players in front of him going down there is going to be a difference, there just is. The Saints didnt go through their injury pahse last year real bad until the end of the season and what do ya know they lost 3 games. Then they got healthy right when the playoffs started and what do ya know …. they beat 3 hall of famers and went through one of the toughest roads in the playoffs a team has ever had to go through to win their championship trophy. This team is beat up and have beaten the team with the best record in the NFC and the team with the best record in the AFC … just imagine what they are gonna do when healthy ….

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:13:18 +0000

I thought the game came down to one thing – execution. I mean, I don’t blame BA for trying to pound the rock 3 times with run plays. If our O-Line can’t get a push to gain an inch, then that is sad. They worked on it all training camp….against a small, quick Saints D? Not good. If I was the OC, I’d call 3 runs too, gotta get that push O-line. Essex admitting he ran the wrong play, pathetic. How many missed blocks did the O-line and running backs have? BA had the personnel in there, but we couldn’t pick up blocks and Ben had to rush throws causing incompletions. It would have been nice to see some kind of adjustment though. I was pissed when BA called a triple fake reverse screen play garbage BS play that almost led to an INT. Saints are blitzing pretty much every play and are fast, what offense has time to run a play that involves three fake hand offs in the back field, then a stupid screen pass, when the whole defense is rushing up to the line of scrimmage because of the fake hand-offs? Are you F-ing kidding me? Dumb play call. Traditional Screen Pass anyone? How about the receivers get on the same page and run some Hot Routes and Ben read that too? Execution, on all fronts was the reason for the loss. Did not block, did not run the ball into the goal for an inch, did not run stop on D on 3rd and 1s, did not run the right routes, did not know the play call, did not challenge the right plays for replay (Mendy TD on 2nd and Goal – who is reviewing this crap for Tomlin, fire that guy!), fumbled the ball on a potential game winning drive (execution), did not make game-time adjustments (coaches, Ben), Skippy missed field goal, etc.

Game ball goes to Stevenson Sylvester for blowing up the Saints Special Teams player. That’s it.

By: chris

chris — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:02:46 +0000

I hear ya Todd. As I said, I really wonder if Arians actually watches games and adapts or just calls whatever the hell he feels like. It wasn’t that hard to figure out the Saints’ were sending the house on 2nd/3rd and long situations. They seemed totally unprepared to handle that.

That 3 down failure at the goal line, to me, was the worst though. I’m a big fan of Steelers Football but you get stood up at the goal line two plays in a row, TRY SOMETHING ELSE.

By: chris

chris — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 23:55:50 +0000

Yeah, I think we’re seeing why the Cards were so willing to give up on B-Mac. But how often does Troy of all people play a stinker? Some of it can be chalked up to just playing a good team although, as I noted, the only effective pass coverage was when LeBeau dropped 7 or 8 guys back into coverage. If that is what you have to do to cover people, your DBs are so not good.

See my next answer for the offensive problem(s).

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 23:16:53 +0000

It was pretty sad that weren’t able to adapt at all to the swarming Saints D-line. I mean, they were consistently rushing 6-7 guys and we couldn’t find anything that would work? Brees dialed into LeBeau’s scheme by the 4th quarter and put points on the board…we just floundered with the same crappy plays the whole game. You see 7 guys you KNOW are going to be rushing, and you think you have time for all 3 receivers to run 15-20 yard routes? Maddening!