The Saints Whoop the Birds, as Big Red is Outcoached Again
As it turns out, the Saints appear to be for real. Head coach Sean Payton is squeezing everything out of the team that he can. They turned out to be a good match for the Birds, but only because the coaching staff blew a lot of key opportunities. Overall, I thought our players did pretty well today, with the exception of a couple bone-headed plays (i.e. Moats running into Dexter Wynn and M.Lewis blowing his coverage).
Rather than a detailed breakdown, there are just a few questions that I need to ask the coaches about how they blew this one:
1) Marty Morningweg, Is our entire offense relying on Big Plays to sustain drives this season? If so, it's a long-term recipe for failure. Is this the best you and Reid can contrive with the roster we have?? Why didn't Westbrook spend more time outside today, in the h-back or slot positions? He's great out there. I've never seen a team attempt so many low percentage plays downfield on key downs. Yes, a good number of these big plays have paid off over the first 5 games, which has been exciting; but defenses will scheme around it as the Saints did today. We need to develop a synchronized short-yardage gameplan and convert 2nd and 3rd downs with higher percentage plays. We went deep on 12 PLAYS today - only one of them worked (Reggie's TD). That's eleven squandered second and third down attempts. There is no reason to go deep more than 2-3 times a game, unless it's just undeniabily available. Morningweg, you get an D- today (the only reason I didn't fail you is because of the nice Reggie Brown misdirection play for a TD). POOR PLAY SELECTION IS ALL ON YOU.
2) Andy Reid, are you ever going to learn how to control a play clock? Again, at the end of the game, we had no timeouts left, mainly because we allowed the play clock to run down to zero multiple times during the second half and had to burn TO's to save from getting penalties. Yes, it was loud in there, but didn't everyone know that the Saints play in a dome? At the end of the game, Sean Payton wisely just let time dwindle down to 3 seconds and then kicked the game-winning field goal. TIME MANAGEMENT IS THE HEAD COACH'S RESPONSIBILITY.
3) Jim Johnson, What happened to all of those nice blitz packages? Did we blitz like what, 4 times today, maybe? We had ZERO sacks against a decent but not great offensive line. Brees just sat back there, comfortably going through his progressions. The couple of times we did threaten Brees, he was rattled. Our D line was completely contained - we could've made that Brees's day miserable. And at what point do you think Joe Horn should get more attention from us - when he had 200 yards receiving? Then, we had that horrible 12-men on the field penatly on a key third down stop at the end of the game; Trent Cole had the sack and we probably would have gotten the ball back. AS GREAT AS LAST WEEK'S DEFENSIVE GAMEPLAN WAS, TODAY'S WAS JUST AS BAD.
Finally, one player who didn't have a good game was Michael Lewis which is a shame. I really like that guy, but he hasn't been playing well lately - I wonder why that is? They benched him during the game, and Andy Reid seemed unhappy with him during his press conference; so looks like Considine will be starting next week.
Rather than a detailed breakdown, there are just a few questions that I need to ask the coaches about how they blew this one:
1) Marty Morningweg, Is our entire offense relying on Big Plays to sustain drives this season? If so, it's a long-term recipe for failure. Is this the best you and Reid can contrive with the roster we have?? Why didn't Westbrook spend more time outside today, in the h-back or slot positions? He's great out there. I've never seen a team attempt so many low percentage plays downfield on key downs. Yes, a good number of these big plays have paid off over the first 5 games, which has been exciting; but defenses will scheme around it as the Saints did today. We need to develop a synchronized short-yardage gameplan and convert 2nd and 3rd downs with higher percentage plays. We went deep on 12 PLAYS today - only one of them worked (Reggie's TD). That's eleven squandered second and third down attempts. There is no reason to go deep more than 2-3 times a game, unless it's just undeniabily available. Morningweg, you get an D- today (the only reason I didn't fail you is because of the nice Reggie Brown misdirection play for a TD). POOR PLAY SELECTION IS ALL ON YOU.
2) Andy Reid, are you ever going to learn how to control a play clock? Again, at the end of the game, we had no timeouts left, mainly because we allowed the play clock to run down to zero multiple times during the second half and had to burn TO's to save from getting penalties. Yes, it was loud in there, but didn't everyone know that the Saints play in a dome? At the end of the game, Sean Payton wisely just let time dwindle down to 3 seconds and then kicked the game-winning field goal. TIME MANAGEMENT IS THE HEAD COACH'S RESPONSIBILITY.
3) Jim Johnson, What happened to all of those nice blitz packages? Did we blitz like what, 4 times today, maybe? We had ZERO sacks against a decent but not great offensive line. Brees just sat back there, comfortably going through his progressions. The couple of times we did threaten Brees, he was rattled. Our D line was completely contained - we could've made that Brees's day miserable. And at what point do you think Joe Horn should get more attention from us - when he had 200 yards receiving? Then, we had that horrible 12-men on the field penatly on a key third down stop at the end of the game; Trent Cole had the sack and we probably would have gotten the ball back. AS GREAT AS LAST WEEK'S DEFENSIVE GAMEPLAN WAS, TODAY'S WAS JUST AS BAD.
Finally, one player who didn't have a good game was Michael Lewis which is a shame. I really like that guy, but he hasn't been playing well lately - I wonder why that is? They benched him during the game, and Andy Reid seemed unhappy with him during his press conference; so looks like Considine will be starting next week.
posted by Paulomon Grundy at 6:03 PM
1 Comments:
Sean Payton always knows how to gameplan for the Eagles. I just consider him their arch-nemesis. Honestly, I think they were prepared for the blitz. An example was on one of their first down pickups. Eagles were coming but for some reason I cannot fathom, they didn't jam the receivers and the result was a quick hit for the 3 yards they needed. Sucky game. Eagles deserved to lose with the crappy special teams (return wise and the Moats thing), 12 men on the field penalty and Lewis' expert coverage skills. Hopefully not starting next week will get his mind straight. Not sure if he's always been this bad at coverage and he's just getting exposed this year or what. Anyway, they looked flat and uninspired to me.
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