Girod Street End Zone

Claude Coupee
Lead Correspondent

I am a man at peace.   There is a stir of anticipation, but no tension.   Most importantly, no fear.

I urge you to join me in blocking out the noise, the distractions, the things that take you away from your center.  You can achieve this by joining me in a somewhat complex but perfect series of phrases comprising the mantra, set forth at various points below.

First, the Saints have been the better team all year when it counts.

The Saints were 13-2, the Vikings 11-4.  (Note:  We have omitted all week 17 data from the analysis wherever feasible.)  Under Adjusted Strength of Schedule, the Saints opponents were .438, the Vikings opponents were .415.

Against playoff teams?  The Saints were 3-1, +54 net points, the Vikings 4-1, +28 net points.

Against teams with winning records?  The Saints were 5-1, +65, the Vikings  4-2, +18.

Against half-decent teams with a some legitimate shot to compete with you straight up? (We cut this off at teams with 6+ wins.)  Saints 9-1, +117, Vikings 6-4, +20.

This is NOT to say the Vikings do not have a very good football team.  But it is to say that we see nothing here that indicates we should be overly swayed by the extra vivid evidence of six Vikings sacks at last week against the Cowboys.   For the vast bulk of 2009, when a good opponent showed up and the bell rang, the Vikings usually did OK and won on points, and the Saints came bombing out of their corner and pounded out a fourth-round TKO.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Second, “team x gives up n yards passing per game” is the most misleading defensive stat in the NFL.

I have been listening to/reading as much as I can about this game all week, and it is positively amusing that not a single person [UPDATE:  I did fine one other than me.  One.] has pointed out that the Saints have one of the best, if not the best, secondaries/pass defenses in the NFL.   The usual position is more akin to the idiot at USA today doing the game summary describing “…the Saints often porous pass defense….”  LMAO.  Watch more football, buddy. [tm]

It seems like everyone is mesmerized by the Saints ranking 26th in yards per game allowed (the Vikings are 19th), as if any one gross statistic without context was worth anything.   I continue to beat the drum that it’s what happens per play that counts.

Again, let us run the comparisons (these are 16-games, I didn’t have the time to re-run all these by hand, but considering what happened in week 17, leaving the last week in only benefits Minnesota).  Opponents passer rating?  Saints 68.6 (NFL rank 3rd), Vikings 92.5 (NFL rank 27th).  Basically, when the “average NFL QB” plays the Saints, he’s Brady Quinn, he plays the Vikings, he’s Donovan McNabb. 

Opponent completion percentage?  Saints 57.5% (T-4th), Vikings 63.7% (25th)

TDs/INTs?  Saints 15/26 (5th/3rd), Vikings 26/11 (23rd/26th)

Don’t forget, all these season stats include the seven-game stretch in the wilderness when our top three CBs, out of 21 possible aggregate games, missed 14 of them and the Witchh Doctor was working voodoo with a patchwork secondary.

Perhaps a bit of synthesized data you would find of interest:  In three road games against pass defenses ranked in the top 10 by OPR, the Vikings were 0-3, with Favre having a total of 2 TDs, 4 INTs, 11 sacks, and an aggregate passer rating in the mid-70s.

What does all this prove?  NOTHING.   But it’s a lot of information pointing in the same direction, I believe that I’ve been more inclusive than selective (i.e., I’m not cherry-picking favorable data and omitting unfavorable), and thus it’s the way to bet.

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Third, despite popular opinion, the Saints have the stronger and more physical offensive line.

(Another drum I keep beating: I am turning into Keith Moon, although I might drink a little more than he did.)   Again, I insist that the Saints have the best OL in the league.  How the OL of a team that has been 1st, 1st, 4th and 1st in offense in the last four years doesn’t have a fabulous rep is just something I can’t explain.

A few more numbers (Saints listed first): 

QB hits allowed — 52 (3rd in NFL)/83 (20th in NFL)

Sacks allowed – 20 (4th)/34 (17th)

Runs for negative yards — 38/51

Yards per carry — 4.5 (6th)/4.1 (20th)

Runs of 10+ yards — 51/56

Successful short-yardage power runs — 201/180

Tell me again why I should be worried that our defense, although not the league’s most powerful front seven, will be consistently blown off the ball?

As a little segue, with all you hear about Adrian Peterson, see those team yards per carry?   Yeah, he ran for 1,383 yards, but as a team, we outrushed the Vikings in every meaningful category, finishing 6th in the league in yards per game along with all the traditional “rushing teams” (behind the Jets, Titans, Ravens, Dolphins and Panthers, and ahead of the Cowboys) while the Vikings were 13th.

We will run behind The Spine, and Brees will have enough time, often enough to make them pay over and over again.  On the other hand, while we’re not the 1985 Bears, there’s been not one team, not one, that’s controlled a game against us by running the ball, and I don’t expect that to change on Sunday.

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If you’re the kind of Saints fan who reads GSEZ, you’ve got to read this:

http://sicklemaster.com/2010/01/13/the-mind-of-a-saints-fan/

, sent by one of our loyal readers.  Contains strong language, but I was ready to run behind this guy into a machine-gun nest.

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Just a few more tidbits.

The Jabari Greer/Sidney Rice matchup is going to severely limit the damage Favre can do.  As great as Jets CB Darrell Revis is, guess which team was #2 in the league at shutting down the opponent’s #1 WR?  Yeah, you probably guessed, “the Saints”, didn’t you.  Good job.  At least, according to Football Outsiders http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/teamdef.   Why is that important?  Gee, who is Brett Favre’s favorite big-play WR, by a wide margin?  Why, Sidney Rice, soon to be locked up by Mr. Greer.  (Interesting side note, Favre’s favorite red zone target is TE Visianthe Shiancoe, and we were #5 at locking up the TE.  The net result is that Favre will need to do a lot of checking down and getting to his secondary targets, and that’s when the fun starts.)

Jeremy Shockey needs to be out there even if he has to play on a pegleg.  When Shockey plays, we have a physical presence in run blocking, a great pass receiver who can beat any LB, and a guy who can both chip and help in pass protection as well as remain a threat on delay or safety valve routes.  More importantly, when he plays, we get a lot more H-back and fullback play out of TE David Thomas, and the drop-off from Shockey to Thomas, and then Thomas back to anyone behind him, is precipitous.  Behind Brees, Shockey is the single most indispensable player on offense, and with Greer, CB Tracy Porter and FS Darren Sharper, one of the five guys who gives us, in my opinion, a winning edge.  Lose any of those guys, and the playing field starts to level.

Brett Favre is due for his annual playoff meltdown.   He’s on the road in a noisy stadium that might not bother him, but it will bother enough of his teammates on offense.  His favorite targets are going to be wearing a Saint defensive back all day.  He’s going to have to throw to win.  He hasn’t had a bad game yet.  You make the call.  Besides, he’s another huge attention whore, and nature abhores an attention whore.

[Come to think of it, is there much funnier than some anonymous guy with his own weblog calling somebody out for being an attention whore?]

The Vikings are a little fat and happy.  It’s human nature.  It’s not to say that they won’t have a level of focus and excitement.  On the other hand, they’ve spent the last two weeks “showing the world,” first blowing out the Giants 44-7 in the final home game to prove to themselves that they could, and then beating up the Cowboys in a 34-3 home playoff win.   Of course, we note that the Cowboys were hot before the Vikings stopped them, and the Eagles were hot before the Cowboys stopped them, etc., etc.  It’s hard to stay so hot for so long, and proving stuff to the world takes a lot of emotional energy, and eventually that energy starts to drain, no matter how much you wish it didn’t, and when it runs out, you just crash.  Nature of the beast.

Look, that’s enough.  There’s other stats that the mainstream media has pointed out, like the Vikings 4-4 road record, that I don’t need to go over.  And I know that this is still a very good Vikings team that won 12 games.

However, for the Saints to lose on Sunday, a number of large and small things would have to go wrong (real OL pass protection leakage, fumbles, critical injuries early, Brees being too tight for too long, crazy officiating), and the Vikings would need to be able to take advantage of a lot of them.  Sure, some of this stuff can and probably will happen, but the chances of all of it happening just aren’t that high.

On the other hand, we have a lot of choices on both sides of the ball, so if one thing’s not working, we’ve got other ways to make it right, and for them, they are living and dying on what their front four and Brett Favre can get them, and that’s just too much to ask.

To me, the subtle difference is that last week the Saints were done and running the clock out with Lynell Hamilton with five minutes left in the third quarter, and the Vikings were throwing into the end zone in the last two minutes of a 27-3 game.   Payton is a full step ahead in the chess match with Brad Childress, and that’s good enough for me.  I’m not fearing any team.

Saints 38, Vikings 20.

GO SAINTS GO!

ps.  124-122-10 for the year, 5-3 in the playoffs.  As Ace Rothstein says, the house always wins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 10:58 am and is filed under The New Orleans Saints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.