If you’ll all indulge me this once, with a nod from The Goat I am going to depart a little bit from my traditional role as GSEZ’s human football abacus and do a little more free associating.  Fan does not live by data alone.

In trying to sort through all the seething fires in my brain in the days’ aftermath from last Saturday’s loss, I kept wondering where all the anger and depression were after the shock and denial.  It’s not like I was going to send out a search party….but I couldn’t figure out why the traditional rage, the type that former DC Rick Venturi used to inspire with more reliability than a Swiss railway system, hadn’t shown up.

Yesterday, I finally settled on where I was about the 2011 Saints, and how it all finished, and where I am now:  it’s where I was the night I fell out of that tree on the eastern levee of the 17th Street canal.  And I think it’s where you should be, too.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Years ago, I was part of a large group of tweens playing jailbreak early on a Saturday night in somebody’s big back yard in Lakeview that backed up onto the 17th Street canal.  I was hiding in a tree growing out of the levee, about 10 feet up in the lower branches, and decided to make my move.  Unfortunately, the “move” involved my hand slipping on a dismount and me just falling backwards out of the tree, which was clearly a sub-optimal approach, and I remember being scared to death in that split second.

I had fallen out of/off of things before, but what I hadn’t yet experienced (possibly because New Orleans is flatter than Keira Knightley) is that when you fall and land on a surface that’s a downslope with a 35- or 40-degree angle, like the side of a levee, it hurts a hell of a lot less than when your line of failure is perpendicular to the line of pain.  So I hit the levee slope and slid down to the bottom…..and got right up, to my utter surprise, because nothing really hurt.  I had taken a pretty good thump and had the wind knocked out of me a little, but with a nervous can’t-believe-I-got-away-with-that laugh I was right back in the game.  The rest of the gang was as surprised as I was, but it sure beat the hell out of a trip to the hospital and everyone being sent home to sit with their families for the rest of the night.

 Where does that leave us with the 2011 Saints and blowing a playoff game in such a painful fashion?  Why am I not hurting like hell, like I should be, and why do I feel tired but relieved and confident?  Basically, we landed on a slope and deflected, and not flat on the deck with a missed-our-one-chance dead-cat bounce, as shown by three critical indicators.

-o-o-o-o-o-

First, we know how to recognize a great team.  When we were younger in our ignorance and delusion we thought the Mora and Haslett era Saints were potentially great teams.  Since we had never seen one up close, we really had no frame of reference, and the greatness of a great NFL team remained a mystery.

But now we’ve been to the mountaintop, seen the promised land, and walked right into it and taken a shiny trophy back home, and most of us truly believe (as do some objective observers such as national NFL media guys) that this team was even better than the one that won it all in 2009.  We did it before, we proved we can be in the top two or three teams fighting to do it again, and showed that this is a strong franchise that should expect to make continued playoff appearances and to contend for a Lombardi every year, like the Patriots, Steelers and Colts of the last 10 years.  We are there.

Second, we saw with our own eyes how close we remain to pre-eminence, even now.  We took the 49ers’ best shot, picked ourselves up off the deck and almost beat them at their house at their own game.   We didn’t deserve to win because of a key systems failure at a point of known weakness (the defensive coordinator’s stubbornness), but when you can take on that kind of challenge and perform so well as a whole under difficult conditions, you know that in addition to all the skill, this team really is tough enough to handle anything, and there’s nothing about a narrow loss of this type that disproves that proposition.  This franchise is still moving forward, not backward.

Third, we have the relentless leadership with the decisive sangfroid necessary to win it all again.  I have to give even further witness to Sean Payton’s greatness here.  Much is made of how the franchise (and really this is Payton) prides itself on being objective in player evaluation, in that once you got here, it’s irrelevant whether you were a first-round pick or a street free agent, the guys who produce get rewarded and those who aren’t good enough eventually cycle out.  He’s not an asshole about it by any means (the handling of the departures of so many hard-working fan favorites — Willie Whitehead, Beerman, Deuce, Predator, Fast Freddie McAfee, Darren Sharper — speak volumes to the man’s legitimate empathy and sense of a healthy organization), but neither ego nor sentiment get in the way of the ultimate goal and what’s best for the whole.

For Payton, it even applies to coaches.  For years at GSEZ, we have long believed that the #1 killer of the above-average class of NFL head coaches is not smoking, coronary disease, cancer, or the heartbreak of psoriasis as much as it is misguided loyalty to one or more key assistant coaches who can’t get it done.

Not Payton.  Such as it was with predecessor DC Gary Gibbs, a better friend of Payton’s, it is with now former DC Gregg Williams, a/k/a The Witchh Doctor, a/k/a The Family Practitioner, a/k/a The Quackk, n/k/a Gone in 60 Seconds (great line from some guy on saintsreport.com about Williams not talking to his defensive players before he left:  “He wanted to tell them, and he sent like eight guys in there to tell them, but none of them got there.”).  You know in your heart that even before the playoffs started, Payton knew that what we were doing, and in particular what Williams was doing, on defense wasn’t good enough.  The rift was there, Payton was right, Williams was wrong, and he’s already gone.

Moreover, we struck decisively to replace him with what is, as far anyone can tell, the best replacement on the market in new DC Steve Spagnuolo.  In a way, it’s a nice add-in of proof that, far from the days when you’d have to beg people to come here, this franchise is now a preferred destination.  The heck with the national sports media:  the free market has spoken, this franchise is where you want to be if you want to be successful.  We may never win another Super Bowl, but no one person or thing is ever going to get in our way.

-o-o-o-o-o-

And that’s why this one loss didn’t hurt so much, and it even taught me something about that obsession with the second Lombardi.

We here at GSEZ are obsessed with the second Lombardi because we wanted to remove all doubts about the franchise:  that 2009 wasn’t a fluke, this isn’t a cute story, this is not God’s consolation for Katrina, or any of that other bullshit.  We wanted it clear to ourselves and the rest of the world that we had arrived, that we belonged, that we had finally taken our place with the other NFL franchises that have had greatness.

But in the days after the loss, given how this team diagnosed and addressed the problems from 2010, logically and methodically built itself into greatness in 2011, and is already moving on to win it all in 2012, we had a moment of clarity.  All we ever really wanted out of the Saints was a professional effort year in and year out, to contend, to be one of the guys.

And we have that now.  The Super Bowl win in 2009 was mission-critical, yes.  But now that we understand greatness, we see it with our own eyes in our own backyard, and without the necessity of outside approbation.  We’re pretty confident that right now the Saints are the best team in the NFL on a neutral field, even if we failed to prove it.  We know how good these guys are, how good this franchise is, to be proud of, to be enjoyed, to yell about on Sundays until we are hoarse.  We’re not fearin’ any team.  And it’s all we ever really wanted.  Maybe there’s a little too much George Bailey or Dorothy Gale going on here, but I just feel like #wegotthis [tm -- Grandmaster Wang], we have arrived, and we ain’t going anywhere any time soon.

-o-o-o-o-o-

To close out on the 17th Street canal, Gregg Williams = US Army Corps of Engineers.

Just sayin’.

-o-o-o-o-o-

It was a tough loss, but the day’s over, it’s the cool of the evening now.  Even though we didn’t get what we wanted, we got plenty, and for right now, it’s enough.  We admittedly won’t be watching much football over the next couple of weeks, and part of me wishes I was on a plane to New Orleans right now like I should be, but I can deal with it all knowing what we got to see in 2011, what we have now, and what’s going to be.

GO SAINTS GO!

]]> http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/2012/01/21/the-report-17th-street-canal-edition/feed/ 1 http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/2012/01/17/the-goat-speaks-quaaaaaack/ http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/2012/01/17/the-goat-speaks-quaaaaaack/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:00:41 +0000 The Goat http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/?p=780 The Goat
GSEZ Founder

Gregg Williams, 2009-2011.

Ggood bye and ggood ******* riddance.   As Patronius said, the Witchh Doctorr might turn out to have been a Quackk all along.  And we can’t say we weren’t warned, either.

http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/2011/11/27/the-report-rating-your-physician-edition/

The chickens, as Malcolm X prophesied, have come home to roost.  And the best Saints team in franchise history, on the cusp of hosting the NFC championship game and heading to an indoor Super Bowl, is going to be watching from the sidelines with the rest of us, because Gregg ******* Williams just had to prove once more that pragmatism >>> ideology every time.

You can spare me all the talk about the five turnovers, how tough the 49ers were, how we should have beaten the Rams, blah blah blah.  This is on Williams, he’s not good enough to coach the Saints, he’s not good enough to go where Drew Brees needs to go, but at least he’s gone.

 -o-o-o-o-o-

The 49ers defense is good, but even with the whole thing setting up perfectly for them, they simply couldn’t stop us at the end of the game, our OL manned up big time, and we gashed them with two fabulous comeback drives.

And this is what makes me so goddamn mad. The other team plays exactly the kind of game it wants to, it was like they wrote the script themselves, our run game is no factor, we cough up five turnovers, we get no bounces our way, we took absolutely their best shot and we still got back up and scored 18 fourth quarter points took the lead twice in the last five minutes. Our mental toughness to fight through all the shit was just amazing.  At some point, we were going to have to win a road playoff game. It should have been this one. We were good enough and strong enough on both sides of the ball to do it.

It should have been the second most satisfying win in franchise history.  But no.  Mr. One Size Blitz All had to have it his way, with yet another 3-3-5 package against a spread offense, blitzing six, and the fastest TE in the NFL, who has already burned you all game, running free on an inside route down the field.

-o-o-o-o-o-

The NFL has long had plenty of ideologues.  They are all colorful.  They like attention.   Invariably, their style is “aggressive.”  You know their names:  Buddy Ryan.  Jerry Glanville.  June Jones.  Mike Martz.  Gregg Williams.  Not colorful, but in the club, is West Coast Offense Andy Reid.  These are all smart, confident guys.  And none of them is ever, ever, ever going to win a Super Bowl running things their way.

Sometimes they can snag one by going along for the ride.  Ryan and Martz won as coordinators who stepped into organizations with a strong GM and head coach and astonishing talent on their side of the ball, as a result of which they deluded themselves into thinking victory was the result of their system and their own brilliant implementation thereof.   Williams arguably gets more credit than any of them for stepping in for the Saints Lombardi in 2009.  But there’s a reason they’re never successful as head coaches.  They’re intellectually lazy and don’t have the emotional courage to be pragmatic.  They fall back on the system, and if they don’t win, it’s not their fault.  The system’s infallible; it must be the players, or the rain, or it just didn’t work, or something.  And those, mes amis, are excuses.

Didn’t Williams mention just two weeks ago that his DBs couldn’t catch a cold if they were naked in the rain?

What’s made Payton so great is that he’s the ultimate pragmatist. Williams is a complete ideologue who’s not capable of adjusting.  And that’s why one is a great NFL head coach, and the other a vagabond stylist one step ahead of the wolves again.

-o-o-o-o-o-

In the end, we knew it should have come down to this.  At some point on that final drive, they were going to set Vernon Davis up in the slot, and we were going to single cover him and send six.  You may as well have tried to stop the rain from falling.  (Somebody please cue the BeeGees, or maybe Creedence.)

Of course, why wouldn’t you keep blitzing, no matter what the situation?  After all, it’s worked so well before, right?  Yeah, right.  Honestly, I struggle to remember once in the last two years when we had a game changing sack fumble or pick six off a blitz right when we needed it.

On the other hand, I’ve seen guys like Matt Ryan, Jake Locker, Max Hall, the late Matt Hasselbeck, Josh Freeman and A.J. Fucking Feeley and now Alex Smith beat our blitz and take games away from us over the last two years. It hasn’t worked since the surprise factor and mojo from 2009 wore off, and like most one-tool guys, Williams is at a loss to adjust. I don’t really care if our personnel aren’t that good. I’ve seen enough of those games, and none of the ones where the defense makes a big play and changes the game. Not one.

And if you’re not getting big plays, and you’re almost last in the league in takeaways, and you’re in the bottom third in the league in sacks….why are we blitzing again?  The bottom line is that Williams is just a terrible game-day coach, particularly in the fourth quarter, and we paid for it again.

What made it even worse on Saturday?  The new OT rules.  We were up three with 40 seconds to go.  The worst thing that happens is OT, right?  What happens in OT?  You score a TD on your first possession, you win no matter what.  We had just scored two consecutive TDs like they were standing still….which they almost were.  The 49ers defense was exhausted, and we were in our rhythm.  JUST DON”T GIVE UP A TOUCHDOWN AND GET ME TO OVERTIME.  If we go to overtime, who’s got the advantage?  The team that’s now scoring at will, or the one that’s struggled to drive down the field all day?  Worst case scenario is they win the toss and drive to a FG.  We get the ball back, we’re scoring something, even if it’s not a TD the first drive, all we need is one stop in OT and we’re scoring again and moving on.  But, no, we had to go for the kill shot.

If there was ever any time where the odds in favor of keeping the ball in front of you were tilted in our favor, it was Saturday.  There’s a part of me that even wonders if Payton said anything to Williams about how to play it.   I guess we’ll never know.

-o-o-o-o-o-

I know that people like to be :fair:, and they will mention things like, well, the defense kept us in that 49ers game, didn’t it?  I guess my response is, well, that’s their job.  The 49ers offense spent most of the year trying to figure out if it was mediocre, limited, or pedestrian.   We had spent the back half of the season getting our act together and had stopped teams just like that.  (IIRC we did have a massive talent infusion into the front seven in the offseason, you’d like to think he’d make at least some progress towards building a defense that can come through in the playoffs.)  

As far as keeping the guys motivated when we were down 17-0, I got this right here:  this organization focuses on bringing in high character guys, and they’re all led by Drew Brees.   That defense was going to stay motivated even if  they suddenly discovered that Williams was the bastard spawn of Richard Lewis and Eeyore.  They’re all competitiors, and they knew they were still in the game.   I concede nothing on that point.

I’ll give him some points for 2009.  Sometimes you get novelty points for unorthodoxy, and it lasts a whole season, but it also sure helps when your quarterback is going 32 for 39 and keeping Peyton Manning on the bench.  Unfortunately, the novelty always wears off, and the greatness comes when you can climb mountains with the routine.

Meanwhile, over the next two years, the defense went sideways or backwards, and none of the young players seemed to make any improvement.  The coup de grace were the road collapses late against Atlanta and Tennessee, which we got away with, and then Saturday, against an offense, and under circumstances, very much like the previous two, and this time we didn’t.  Once again, a basic 4-1-6 against a spread offense, that’s for losers.  We’ve got to have a 3-3-5 so we can blitz.  Thanks.

-o-o-o-o-o-

It’s not that Williams is a bad person.  It’s that he’s not good enough.  Right now we’re all about Great, and he’s just Good, but we’ve seen the bottom of his bag of tricks, and Great just ain’t in there.  Like the Music Man, he’s smart enough to move on.

Maybe we can get Robert Preston to install a dime package next year.

At least he’s gone, and we can move on.   We’ll have more on the free agent situation, and FWIW my preliminary a call on whether the new DC should be Mike Nolan (both Denver (2009) and Miami (2010-11) improved greatly upon his arrival), Jack Del Rio (Carolina was great when he was DC in 2002, Jax defenses historically solid and they NEVER had a QB) or Steve Spagnuolo (Giants 17, Pats 14), honestly I think you can’t go wrong with any of them.  

But that’s for another night.  I’m gonna go pour a 40 on the curb and go to bed and try to move on.

WHO DAT.

Yeah, I’ll admit it.  There was one night in my life I didn’t hate the 49ers.  On January 29, 1995, the 49ers won Super Bowl XXIX 49-26 over the San Diego Chargers, and Rickey Jackson got his well-deserved Super Bowl ring.

Other than that, fuck ‘em.   The Falcons hate runs strong because we have to deal with them twice a year.  For better or worse, the 49ers, who have been pretty much irrelevant since 1998, essentially ran and hid with realignment in 2002, but we have now hunted them down.  I am looking forward to Saturday night’s game like a Russian plutocrat heading to Vegas for a four-day weekend with a suitcase full to bursting with quality blow and stacks of non-consecutive Benjamins.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 I’m sure you’re at least a little like me.  You’re so tired of hearing about the Frisco defense, you want to poke out your own eardrums, or at least stop clicking on ESPN.com more than once every 11 minutes to see if anything has happened (which it has not) or there’s any new information (which there is not).

It’s just astonishing to me that everyone is ignoring the great subplot of this game:  the Saints defense against the 49ers offense.

It’s certainly true that this Saints defense isn’t one of the league’s few “dominating” defenses, if you can even have one any more. But we really haven’t given up many long, grinding Touchdown Drives in the back half of the season. Also, we gave up only 18.8 PPG in the last 8 games, which would be good for 5th in the NFL over a full season, and I think it’s a meaningful metric because we played much better offenses in the last eight games (average NFL rank of those opponents in yards per game is 12) than the first half (average rank of those was 20).

It’s not a great Saints defense, but at this point it’s above average, and that’s where we needed to get from where we were in August.

And the 49ers are exactly the kind of team we can stop:  prefer to run the ball with a grinding back, control the clock, the QB is a game manager whose favorite target is his tight end…..all of which sounds like a hell of a lot like Atlanta and Tennessee, teams whose offenses we handled beautifully in the back end of the season.

To make sure, we went to one of our favorite stats, Touchdown Drives (six plays or more, 60 yards or more, resulting in a TD) versus Short Drives (three or fewer plays, or 10 or fewer yards, resulting in no score, other than a FG when you already got the ball in FG range).  The 49ers in 2011?

Pretty stark:  11 Touchdown Drives, as opposed to 71 Short Drives, in 16 games.  Jesus.  And only three of those Touchdown Drives have come in the last nine games.  These guys can’t move the ball.  To be sure, they did have some yards, and the occasional/rare big play for a TD (QB Alex Smith had only 41 plays of 20+ yards, and six of 40+ yards, all season), but mostly they just either punted the ball back to you or kicked a field goal.

Since the back half of the season started, when The Family Practitioner finally had enough time for this new front seven to get it together, we’ve been choking off just those kinds of attacks pretty regularly.  The teams that move on us?  Big-arm teams with stud WRs like Green Bay, Detroit and Carolina.  Don’t think any of those guys are showing up on Saturday in the Bay Area.

They’ve essentially got three weapons:  hand it to RB Frank Gore, or throw it to TE Vernon Davis or WR Michael Crabtree, who combined for 139 of their 277 pass completions.  Only one other receiver (including backs) had as many as 20 catches.

But this is big-boy time.  They can’t hide their offense any longer, even against a slightly above average squad like the Saints defense.  We will focus on making sure the run game never gets started, bracket Davis, take our chances letting CB Jabari Greer run with Crabtree, and make Smith beat us throwing to a bunch of guys who are not ready for prime time.

Moreover, this is the playoffs.  They will either make doubly sure to play it close to the vest and protect the ball, or they’ll get clever and get way out of their comfort zone and try to do a whole lot of new shit with a lot of bit players playing the first playoff game of their lives.  Honestly, I am more than happy taking my  chances here either way.  It’s not that they can’t keep up with us if we’re scoring 30.  It’s more like how do they not go into a blind panic once we score a second touchdown.  This will be the biggest and best game of the year for this Saints defense.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Turns out this is yet another “bat game” for the team, whereby bats are handed out to the players.  Honestly, given the cast of characters we have, I’d like to think that all you’d have needed was a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, but I am willing to defer to Payton on the issue.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Something else we like to look at:  results against quality opposition.

The 49ers played five games against playoff teams and went 4-1 in those games with a plus-25 in total points.

The Saints played seven games so far against playoff teams and are 6-1 with a plus-97.

You can expand it to teams that finished .500 or better if you want.

The 49ers are 6-3 in nine games against teams .500 or better, with a total of plus-37 points in those nine games. The other 114 of your plus-minus in points came against the weak sisters.

The Saints were 8-1 in nine game against teams .500 or better, with a plus-119 in points scored in those games. Considering the season-opening loss to the Packers at GB, we were as good against the league’s better teams as the 49ers were against the bottom dwellers.

As far as they “when did you play them” argument, we note that we played and beat both the Bears and Texans early before each was slammed by injuries.  As far as “who’s hot”, we played winning teams in six of our last eight games, where we went 8-0 with a plus-149 in points against teams with a combined record of 67-61.  The 49ers were 6-2 down the stretch against teams with a combined record of 62-68, with a plus-63.

There’s no denying we had a mid-season brainlock. There’s also no denying who’s played a lot better when the bell rang at 3 o’clock and the big boys got out of school, and who is playing better ball now. If you really think the 49ers played better against the better teams, all I can say is you’ll have a lot more time to consider the point starting around late Saturday afternoon.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Here’s the essence of it:  we can win the 20-17 type game the 49ers need to play to win.  They can’t win the 30-point type game that we will play if they make any mistakes at all.

My belief is that the reason you’ve heard so much blather about the 49ers defense, the field, the Saints road record, the Saints outdoors record, blah, blah, blah, is that nobody in the media wants to come out and say that Frisco is this year’s model of the 10-6 ballclub masquerading as a 13-3 team behind a flurry of turnovers.  Everybody and their mother’s son has talked themselves into the only issue being the 49ers ability, combined with mother nature and sunshine, to stop the Saints.   From my point of view, you study that  49ers offense all year, and this is another version of the 2001 Bears, or maybe the 2006 Bears.  If they don’t get turnovers, they starve and die.  And the willful ignorance of the Saints fabulous road record since 2006 (best in the NFC) is maddening.

The only way we lose this game is

– we go into one of those Twilight Zone games where we’re a little flat or off, Brees starts to press, we can’t get out of the funk and we have at least two turnovers;

– the 49ers don’t make any mistakes under pressure themselves,;

– the 49ers consistently turn their opportunities into touchdowns; and

– some other bizzarro shit goes wrong in the fourth quarter.

Not gonna happen.

I have looked and looked and looked and I just can’t come to any conclusion other than that we’re the superior team, and there’s nothing about this matchup that’s getting me scared.  On top of that, WE HAVE DREW MOTHERFUCKING BREES, who is as badass a playoff quarterback as there is in the league.  The days of him pressing against pressure like he did in 2008, and in parts of 2010 when he had to carry an injured team on his own injured knee, are over.  Anybody picking us to lose is counting on him coming up short in the playoffs, in the face of his  107.0 passer rating, 16 TDs and one INT in seven playoff games with the Saints.  I am at a loss to explain these people.

All I can say is that people see what they want to see, and we see what is.   We’ll force our share of three-and-outs and get at least one turnover.  They may stop us here, or there, or for a little while, and they may get a turnover, but eventually we’ll break through.   If you ran a simulated game 100 times, we might win a close game, they might win a close game, we might win a blowout….but they’re not going to win a blowout.  They’re gonna need a bigger boat.  They won’t have one.   I know how this is going down.

Saints 30, 49ers 16.

WHO DAT.

Now that we have dispatched the not-ready-for-prime Detroit Lions (although not without a tip of the cap to Lions QB Matthew Stafford and to Megatron), we turn to the next order of business, a multi-purpose business trip to San Francisco, or, as we shall refer to it, Frisco, because they hate that.   Among this weekend’s to-do’s:

• survive and advance to the NFCCG;
• win our first road playoff game ever;
• exact a bit of revenge for the suffering of our ancestors in the 80s and early 90s, when we are certain that there’s no way the 49ers ever rounded the corner on any salary cap or free agency issues, because former 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo is just not that kind of guy; and
• most importantly, shutting a lot of people the fuck up about how good the 49ers are, and how tough a matchup this is for the 2011 New Orleans Saints, because we are playing outside for fuck’s sake.

And so the second season begins.  The world of maybe one-and-done, which we thought we left behind in the John Hughes era, only to rediscover in Seattle while the 2010 team was still looking for itself in a post-Lombardi fog 11 months later.  January madness.  Win or go home.  Survive and advance.  Nurse, hand me another cliche, stat.

-o-o-o-o-o-

So where does that leave us in the opening round of the playoffs, other than seething with revenge for having the Bye, which was our Birthright, stolen from us?

We have solved Bruce Cockburn’s problem:  the lions will be right here.

I spent part of this evening struggling with buyer’s remorse, having hoped for the Packers to beat the Lions last Sunday to avoid a third game with the Falcons for the opening round of the playoffs.  Dumb, dumb, dumb of me.   Dumb.  I let my fear of the possibility, however remote, of having to deal with losing to the Falcons in the playoffs again blind me to a whole bunch of points that would have been more obvious if I hadn’t been drinking double Maker’s Mark old fashioneds all that afternoon:

1.  We own the Falcons.  We talked about this last week.  I swear that somebody told me that Falcons HC Mike Smith has a tramp stamp across his lower back that says “Sean Payton” in old English letters.   (Not sure I want to know how he knows, honestly.)  There’s not a single thing they do well enough that conflicts with anything we don’t do that well.

2.  Falcons QB Matt Ryan, Mr. October, is a hothouse flower who is not that mobile in the pocket and does not like to get hit, and that is not how you win in the playoffs.  By contrast, Lions QB Matt Stafford is a tough SOB who threw for 5,000 yards this season and gets better every game.  You win playoff games with great quarterback play, and without it you go home.  We have not yet seen Stafford’s ceiling.

3.  That 31-17 win we had over the Lions earlier this season was one of only two home games all year that was remotely close.  Looking back, we had a 24-17 lead and the Lions had the ball with a first down at our 35 with 13:00 to go in the game.  The Lions outgained us, had more first downs, and held the ball for 35 minutes.  Thankfully, they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with dumb penalties and three offensive PI calls.  Not exactly a comforting blowout.

4.  Lions HC Jim Schwartz is overly aggressive, but you’d rather have that in the playoffs than a guy like Mike Smith who really isn’t comfortable going too far from the book.  Fortuna audaces iuvat.  The Falcons, on the other hand, are the NFL’s version of an e-tough guy pounding out abrasive and cocky message board posts from his mother’s basement.  You know:  bitches.  It’s why they punked out in the playoffs the last two years and are 1-5 (with the “1″ a stone gimme when we missed a chip shot FG in OT) in close games against us over the last six years.  They were not going to rise up.

5.  In addition, the Lions defense is stronger, with a better opponent passer rating and was fifth in INTs.  It’s a strength-on-strength issue.

6.  We know the Falcons get tight late in the season.  The Lions are an unknown and could come in looser than a slacker’s earlobe with a six-inch spacer.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Okay, now that that’s out of my system, let’s be rational.  While the Lions are an improving team, fulfilling one of my core tenets that teams improve more during a season than they do during an off-season….so are the Saints.

As an amplification/coda to Claude’s opus from yesterday, not only is the Saints defense improving, but we’re also starting to see flashes from some of our younger players:  CB Patrick Robinson, LB Tez Wilson, DE Cam Jordan, UDFA FS Isa Abdul-Quddus, even CB Johnny Patrick, only recently getting live PT during games in place of CB Leigh Torrance at the dime back.  Any human organization, and an NFL team is hardly an exception, gets its leadership from its veterans but its energy from its youth.  Once that youth starts to become truly productive, even in small bursts, the entire unit’s energy goes up.

 Also, as I am not the first to note, we’ve had great negative splits this year, doing better in the back half of each of our NFC South rematches.  Of course, in each case the latter game was at home, so that would stand to reason.

On the other hand, though, in any rematch, assuming things like relative team health were equal, who is going to benefit more from having game film and actual game experience to use for the rematch?  The team coached by Sean Payton and Gregg Williams, or any other team in the NFL?  It’s hardly a given that the team that got beat the last time has the most to gain; nobody ever considers the fact that there’s a good chance that Payton and The Witch Doc– The Family Practioner will solve more issues than the other guys will and that we’ll give them a worse beating the second time around.

The Saints also have the best all-around OL in football.  LT Jermon Bushrod has made himself into a first-tier player, OGs Carl Nicks and Jahri Evans are both now playing the finest ball of their careers, and C Brian De La Puente and RT Zack Strief have both been revelations.  Talk about strength-on-strength:  nobody is in a better position to neutralize Detroit’s fine DTs than us.   A great OL takes away a lot of risk and gives you room for error.

Finally, a small health note.  It’s not exactly politically correct to say it, while I would rather not have RB Mark Ingram on injured reserve, we run the ball a lot better when power RB Chris Ivory is in.  It jumped out at me watching the Lions replay — Ingram still has too much indecisive stutterstep once he gets the handoff, and it was materially affecting the timing of the running plays, sort of the dead vaccine version of Reggie Bush Tiptoe Disease.  Ivory has better vision and smoother footwork coming off his first cut, and/or bouncing things outside.  I think it’s correctible on Ingram’s part, but right now Ivory suits the team better.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Now that we’ve completed our Tevye drill, I’ll admit to a mild level of concern about Saturday night, and that this could be a tougher and closer game than many koolaid drinking and cheese eating fans might consider possible.  I think the Saints and the Packers are the class of the league, but the Lions are among the teams with the physical talent and level of quarterback play that could pull a Buster Douglas in any given playoff game.  If they play a perfect game and we don’t, they could beat us.

I am going to lean heavily on Drew Brees here.  The only losing formula I see on the table is him feeling pressure and throwing at least two untimely picks, our defense reverting to its earlier season form and suddenly being unable to stop the Lions for three-plus quarters, and then something going wrong at the end and somehow we lose a close game.

In all the lawyer shows, from Perry Mason to Law and Order and beyond, they’re always talking about “beyond a reasonable doubt.”  That losing scenario looks pretty unlikely to me.  A lot has to go wrong, and a good portion of it would have to go wrong with Drew Brees.  It’s a home game.  A night game.  A playoff game for a guy with 15 TDs and two INTs in seven career playoff games and a post-season career passer rating of 102.0.   To be truly concerned, I’d have to have a reasonable doubt about Drew Brees delivering high quality football in a playoff game on a Saturday night.

Saints 38, Lions 20.  On to Green Bay, after a short layover in Frisco, and we’ll see what happens.

GO SAINTS GO!

6-8-2 to finish, 121-116-19 for the year.  And that, folks, is why there’s a vig.

There’s the old saw that adversity doesn’t build character, but it does reveal it.  Such is the way of the final week of the NFL season, where all the bad marriages blow up (Jets, Oakland), the wannabes get exposed a little (Lions, 49ers), and the pros tell everyone to step aside so you can see how it’s done (Packers, Saints, Patriots). 

But before we try to start picking apart playoff scenarios based on who’s hot and not, whether/how badly we beat the Lions, should we get ahead of ourselves about Frisco (because they hate being called that, sort of their version of “New Orleenz”), we wanted to take a few quick deep data dives to get a sense of the Saints.  Most of us Saints fans are doing a pretty good job of ignoring the shiny object of various individual and team records because we want the permanent legitimacy and complete redemption that only comes with a second Lombardi.  Nobody wants to be the one-and-done dynasty that wasn’t, like the 80s Bears or the Colts of the ‘aughts; the teams you remember are the multiple winners, the 49ers, the Steelers, the Cowboys, the Patriots.  THOSE are the teams that set the standard and send coaches and players to the Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, we Saints fans have no frame of reference to gauge this current Greatness thing that’s been thrust upon us.  Last year, we looked (and we believe with great insight) into where the 2009 team fit with the Super Bowl winners of the last 10 years.  Thus, we decided to do a little digging as to how good this team is, not in any sense of premature celebration, but more for a foundation of how much swagga and steel the fan base should have starting Saturday night and hopefully all the way to a post-game victory party at St. Elmo’s.

-o-o-o-o-o-

I don’t think anyone’s particularly focused too heavily on the Saints having lead the league in plus/minus in points this year with a plus-208, most of which was piled up in the gaudy plus-147 in the team’s 8-0 finish to the season.   As we recalled that the plus-minus of plus-169 in 2009 was among the highest in the last decade or so, we went back and took a look at the other top plus scores since 2000:

2011 — Saints, +208
2010 — New England, +205
2009 — Saints, +169
2008 — Baltimore/Tennessee, +141
2007 — New England, +315 (wow — the 18-0 “eff you” team)
2006 — Chicago, +172
2005 — Denver, +137
2004 — New England, +177
2003 — Kansas City, +152
2002 — Philadelphia, +174
2001 — St. Louis, +230
2000 — Oakland, +180

We bolded the only two that were higher.  This proves nothing, obviously, other than right now the Saints, based on what all the other really, really good teams of recent vintage looked like, are an absolute category 5 ballclub heading into the postseason, even moreso than the 2009 team, or almost anybody else you were surveying over the past decade.  While being the top plus-minus hardly guarantees you a Super Bowl trip, the fact that it’s our second in three years removes a good chunk of the fluke aspect.  This team is for real.

Before you get all hot and bothered, though….the Packers were second this year at plus-201.  Yeah, they’re still a great, great team.  On the other hand, just to get ahead of ourselves a leeeeeetle bit, while Frisco was a nice little plus-151, they’re 6-2 and only plus-63 over the last eight games, so forgive my lack of nerves over the prospect.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 Meanwhile, how hard is it to win 37 games regular season games in three years?  In the 24 seasons since the league went to a 16-game schedule in 1978, only 14 teams have had a three game stretch with more than 37 wins, and an additional 13 (if you include the 1967-69 Raiders, who did it in a 14-game (!) schedule) have gotten to 37 wins over three seasons.  The Colts and Pats did it each five times in the ‘aughts (i.e. this decade), the 49ers six times in their Walsh/Seifert/Mariucci run from 1987-1998, and the Bears hit it three times from 1984-88.  Other than that, it’s one-offs like the 1992-94 Cowboys at 37 wins, the 1996-98 Broncos (38), the 1990-92 Bills, and the 1999-2001 Rams.

Again, this doesn’t prove anything, but it gives you more confidence to be in that company than one-year wonders that wander into the Super Bowl and wander back out again like the 2000 Ravens, the 2002 Bucs and the 2007 Giants.   And of the teams that did it, only the aforementioned Bears and the 1983-85 Dolphins and 2002-04 Eagles, neither of which won it, failed to go to multiple Super Bowls.

Again, this proves nothing, as at least one more great team is between the Saints and Super Bowl XLVI.  But I also don’t think you can discount the intangibles derived from playing consistently at a high level over periods of time, when they’re needed in moments of crisis in one-and-done, win-or-go-home playoff situations.  If you’re looking for a reason to be in that number and march with no fear, here it is.  This is a great team.   And to once again quote the great Damon Runyon (I’ve really got to start working on my own material), the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.

-o-o-o-o-o-

You know how HC Sean Payton is always trying to steal from the best?  How much of the non X-and-O stuff he learned from Bill Parcells?  In thinking about how we finished the season, basically curb-stomping everyone at home and winning with solid performances on the road (double-digit leads in the second half of each game, even if a couple of finishes were a little exciting), I am wondering if Payton took a leaf out of Pats HC Bill Belichick’s book from 2007.

In 2007, Belichick motivated his team with a demand to go 19-0, and not in a nice-guy way, but in a scorched-earth way, breaking records, smashing heads and generally running people out of the stadium (ESPN’s Bill Simmons essentially coined this an “eff you” mode).  Unfortunately, over the grind of a 16-game schedule, they just ran out of gas as the finish line and were foiled by a resourceful and loose Giants team in the Super Bowl.   Missed it by THAT much.

On the other hand, if you take the principle, but don’t try to extend it over a whole season, maybe you got a little something something there.  Payton’s always stealing from winners that he respects, and he respects Belichick a ton.  I’d be curious if the kernel of the idea for our own scorched-earth last six games or so didn’t come from the guy who got three rings in the ‘aughts.

-o-o-o-o-o-

It’s been noted that the only 13-3 team ever NOT to have a first round bye, other than us this year, was the 1999 Titans, who lost narrowly in the Super Bowl to the Rams.   I ruefully note that if you take the 1987 Saints, relegated to the wild card at 12-3 by the 13-2 49ers, only three three-loss teams since 1978 have failed to have a first round bye…..and we’re two of them.

No matter.  War on the whole world, and death to them all.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 One final thought as we head into the post-season, and it’s something I really haven’t seen anybody else focus on:  over the last eight weeks, the Saints defense has quietly turned into a playoff-ready unit.

It makes sense that we’d play better D in the back half of the year — the Saints wisely went out and revamped the entire front seven in the offseason, with only six (DE Will Smith, DT Sedrick Ellis, DE Jeff Charleston, LBs Jon Vilma, Scott Shanle and Jo-Lonn Dunbar) back from the 2010 squad, trying to mesh with nine new guys (DTs Aubrayo Franklin, Shaun Rogers, Tom Johnson, DEs Cam Jordan, Turk McBride, and LBs Tez Wilson, Jon Casillas, Will Herring (now on IR) and Ramon Humber).   But with all those new guys, there’s just so much implementing, teaching, and meshing you can do with a short training camp, and it showed.

I think the tide actually began to turn in the bizzarro three-game axis when Payton got hurt:  the 26-20 loss to the Bucs, the 62-7 Colts destruction and the terrible 31-21 loss to the Rams.  Playing some admittedly bad offenses, the defense gave up only two Touchdown Drives (six or more plays, 60 or more yards, ending in a TD) over those three games, with 11 Short Drives (10 yards or less or three or fewer plays, and the opponent doesn’t score or is held to a FG if they started already in FG range).

Even with that three-game stretch in the first half of the season, the split was pretty remarkable.  In the first eight games, the average of the NFL rank of opponent offenses (Packers, Bears, Texans, Jags, Panthers, Bucs, Colts, Rams — some bad offenses in there) by yards gained was 20.1, and we gave up 13 Touchdown Drives while having 27 Short Drives, and gave up an average of 23.4 points a game.

In the second half, against far better opposition (Bucs, Falcons twice, Giants, Lions, Titans, Vikings, Panthers), the opponents’ offenses’ average rank was 12th in the NFL, and we gave up 14 Touchdown Drives but had 40 Short Drives, while giving up only 18.8 points per game (FWIW, that PPG figure for a whole season would have been fifth in the NFL this year; we did take better care of the ball with fewer turnovers in the back half, but still).  And only one team, the Giants, scored more than two TDs, and that game was over when we were up 35-10 in the third quarter.

While the turnovers aren’t eye-popping (almost nobody had fewer takeaways this year), with our offense, we don’t need them as much.  We don’t need a short field; we can score from anywhere.  All we need are stops.  And we get those as well as any team in the league.  Those 40 Short Drives  in the back half, that’s roughly five three-and-outs a game, and generally against decent offenses.  You don’t think we can’t go to town and make bank on that?  What made it work was being fifth in the league (over the whole season) at allowing only a 33.2% third-down conversion rate, and a fabulous only 6-for-22 on fourth down tries by the opponent.  On a blended rate, including the fourth-down stops, we had the second best rate in the NFL of denying you a first down once you hit third down, and I didn’t scope all the games by hand but I can’t believe the numbers aren’t trending in our favor the last eight weeks.  And that fourth-down stop rate, that’s some hard, pipe-hittin’ work right there, as much of a lift for a whole team as a turnover or any other kind of big play, and we had more of them than any team in the league

In short, after 16 weeks,  I am still not sure if he’s The Witch Doctorr, but if he’s The Family Practitioner, he’s somewhere between Marcus Welby and House.  This defense is ready for the playoffs.

-o-o-o-o-o-

I’ll leave it for The Goat to go heavily into the Detroit game, but will first note with pride that we said before the 2011 opener this was at least a 12-win team, and if we had to, we ‘d bet the over (we also said we’d have the bye, of course, but gimme a break).  Bring on the post-season.  Not fearin’ ANY team.

WHO DAT.

In the immortal word of MC Hammer:  Proper. 

There is nothing better than a beatdown of the Atlanta Falcons on national television, and then I got to wondering why this felt so particularly….good.

What I finally came to is that it’s the reverse of the feeling we’d had as Saints fans since 1967, and now we have to adjust to living in a new world.  For a real fine expression of just how new that world is, I can’t recommend this

www.moosedenied.com/we-make-the-rules-pal/

enough. Warning, there are some dirty words (gasp!), but in this case they are somewhere between “completely justified” and “sine qua non”.

-o-o-o-o-o-

What you’re feeling in general, of course, is greatness.  It’s here, it’s real, and it’s spectacular.  What makes it even better is that the one team you hate so much, is good enough to compete….but not good enough.  Even better, they think they are this close.  And if this doesn’t feel for them like how it felt for us to be chasing the 49ers in the late 80s, I don’t know what does.  And now let’s look at it, Claude style:

Saints vs. 49ers, 1986-1992 (Saints score first, @ = at SF):

1986
17-26 @ — L
23-10 — W
1987
22-24 –L
26-24 @ –W
1988
33-34 — L
17-30 @ — L
1989
20-24 — L
13-31 @ — L
1990
12-13 — L
13-10 @ — W
1991
10-3 — W
24-38 @ — L
1992
10-16 — L
20-21 @ — L

Maddening.  As we’ve said before, we were Cheers, and the 49ers were Garry’s Olde Towne Tavern.  Four-and-10 over seven years, and just 2-6 in games decided by less than a touchdown.  The whole time I thought were were ohsoclose, just right there, and the whole time the 49ers were just better, their B-plus game or even their B-game always a little better than our A-game.

And now a brief review of the Falcons-Saints results in the Payton era, this time from Atlanta’s point of view:

Falcons versus Saints, 2006-2011, (Falcons score first, @ = at N.O.):

2006
3-23 @ — L
13-31 — L
2007
16-22 — L
14-34 — L
2008
34-20 — W
25-29 @ — L
2009
27-35 @ –L
23-26 — L
2010
27-24 @ — W
14-17 — L
2011
23-26 — L
16-45 @ — L

Look familiar?

That’s 10-2 Saints over the last 12 games, and the Saints are 5-1 against the Falcons in games decided by less than a touchdown.  There’s a reason for it, in parallel to the old Saints-49ers:  when you have a huge edge in coaching (both in planning and in game-day moves) and a huge gap at quarterback, and you expect to win more of the games, and more of the close games.  That’s just how it is.

Mike Smith, Atlanta’s head coach, is obviously a fine football man.  His teams are disciplined, they hit, they play hard for 60 minutes.  When absolutely everything fell into place last year in the regular season (turnovers, another year of being among the league leaders in penalties called against their opponents over 16 games, ridiculous good health), they could even get to 13-3.

All of which is just too, too evocative of Jim Mora Sr.  But while Smith is a fine checker player, at the highest levels of NFL play, including the playoffs, the game is chess.  And Sean Payton and Drew Brees play chess.

I wish I could have gotten this baby out late last week (apologies, travel schedules blew up GSEZ’s posting schedule this week and last), so we could have dropped a massive BOLD PREDICTION on you about a comfortable Saints victory, but when you look back at those patterns, it’s obvious enough.  Forget the business about division rivals knowing each other, and the games always being close, blah, blah, blah.  There’s a huge difference between being a contendah and a champion.  We’re just a lot better than every other random decent NFL team, and the Falcons are no exception, and they just have to deal with it.

-o-o-o-o-o-

I guess I have to give my whole two cents on Drew’s current situation, as addressed to some extent by Grandmaster Wang in his moosedenied.com post linked above.  My take is that his greatness is qualified by so many people out of envy and self-loathing.

Most of the other great quarterback heroes of this or any other generation tend to be, well, taller and/or swaggerier (now there’s some good writing there, non?) figures, starting with Unitas and working forward through Namath, Fouts, Marino, Aikman, Manning, Brady, and the like, even Rothlisberger for crissakes.  Big guys who apparently have strong arms, and some with mobility to boot.  The outlier, Joe Montana, won a title in his third season, and seemed to have been born/blessed with magical and transcendent qualities not ordinarily doled out to mortals.

On the other hand, Brees is, well, he’s the same apparent height and build as a lot of us.  If those other guys were great, well, they were born that way, and as long as they put in the requisite Hard Work, they were granted the fruits of their destiny.

But Brees is too much like the rest of us, so for him to be great, he must have a little help, or not be so great, or something, just like when that nondescript kid from your class you didn’t remember or like all that much became an internet millionaire:  why him and not us?  Must be all luck, or enough that it all fell into place, or his buddy got him in there, or something.  What kills Brees for these guys is his apparent regularity, that his gifts and talent are not so apparent.

In short, I can rationalize my own mediocrity when I look at Tom Brady, but I can’t when I look at Drew Brees, because there is no good answer for why him and not me (other than “I must have failed somewhere”), and then without even realizing it I have to start pulling him down by degrees.  It doesn’t make the critics/minimizers/qualifiers bad people, it just proves their humanity with all its limitations.

When you look at the sheer numbers, the wins, the Lombardi, what he did with this whole franchise, and the fact that the whole book’s not written yet, Brees is on a par with Manning and Brady as one of the three transcendent quarterbacks of his generation, to take his place with the Unitases and the Marinos of the other generations, and everybody is just going to have to come to terms with it one way or the other.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Meanwhile, a very happy new year to everyone, and let’s enjoy an injury free game against the Panthers tomorrow.  There’s no way in hell the 49ers are losing, so let’s come out unscathed and get ready to hat trick our favorite little bitches in two weeks.

GO SAINTS GO!

8-7-1 last week, 115-108-17 on the year.  Need a big finish to beat the bookie.

It was the best of games, it was the worst of games.

Yeah, cheapo lead-in, stolen millions of times by hacks like me since the late 1800s.  You get what you pay for around here.

If I told you the Saints would have a road game in which

• they rushed for 114 yards and held the ball for over 37 minutes
• they had no turnovers
• Drew Brees had a completion percentage over 75% and passed for 337 yards
• the defense had held the other team to three points for the first 42 minutes of the game
• the defense had a huge drive-killing stuff on a fourth-and-1 quarterback sneak
• we held Chris Johnson to 23 yards rushing

then you would have assumed a nice blowout victory.

If I told you the Saints would have a road game in which

• they had TD punt return called back
• they went 0-3 in the red zone, with one TD pass not called a TD on a thisclose call by the refs and another TD pass dropped in the end zone by Lance Moore
• they had 11 penalties, any number of which resulted in the recall of scores or nice gains
• the Saints would lose two challenges, but the Titans would win one on a thisclose call resulting in a lost fumble reversed
• on the last three Titans drives of the game, starting with 7:01 to go, the Saints allowed a total of 188 yards on just 20 plays

then you would have assumed it was a colossal choke-job loss.

You were closer the first time.

That was actually a very good win. The Titans aren’t complete slackers, especially on defense, and the  bizzarro-world, flag-happy officiating in the first half  took everybody out of their rhythm, which sort of levelled the playing field.

Also, that’s about as well as the Titans could have played, and we got was a nice road win over a decent, contending team that played probably as good a game as the Titans are capable of playing.  They didn’t commit a huge slew of penalties, didn’t leave the ball all over the ground, tackled pretty well, and held the Saints offense to just three plays over 25 yards.  We took their best shot, and their best shot wasn’t good enough on an odd day for us when we left a bunch of points on the field: the flagged TD on the punt return, Graham’s catch/non-catch (as opposed to Titans QB Jake Locker’s over-the-pylon TD call), and Moore’s bi-annual end zone drop. That game was a lot closer to a 34-17 win than a 24-22 loss, and that’s four solid wins (two blowouts) against four contending teams that are playing pretty good football right about now.

There were also some parallels to the Falcons game (also a road win against a winning team, IIRC), right down to the defense giving us three-and-a-half quarters of very solid football. Despite the late lapses, they are getting more confident that somehow somebody is going to make a play, and they’re starting to get that done.

We’re getting real close to real good.   Real close.  We KNOW the defense has some limitations….but they are starting to make at least some plays, and you can’t constantly run around looking for problems and overestimating the defenses of the other contenders, or you’ll make yourself insane.

Saints head coach Sean Payton always talks about breaking the regular season into four four-game quarters, and he we are at 9-3.  While we’re not quite yet smelling greatness, we’re getting at least a whiff of something good here, and they’re not done cooking, although the roux is already a perfectly roast nut brown.

At this point, I would say that at least a little bit of celebration is in order — with a regular season record of 33-11 from 2009 to the present, this is already the most successful three-year run in Saints history, topping the 32-win three-year run from 2008-2010 and the 31-win runs by the 1987-89 and 1990-92 and 1991-93 Jim Mora Sr. Saints.  In addition, we are 9-3 for only the eighth time in franchise history, having hit that mark in each of the last three years.  (Oddly, the Mora Saints hit that mark five times in six seasons from 1987-1992, and never finished with a first-round bye or a playoff win, one of the great frustrating sports mysteries of my lifetime.  Or maybe not. )  Throw in the playoff appearances and a Lombardi, and what will be our second division title in three years, heady times indeed.  Laissez les bon temps….whatever.

But let’s not stop there.

Look, to be sure, we are not at #wegotthis [tm -- Grandmaster Wang] like we wanted to be, but we are very definitely at #doable (no, it does not always mean what you think it means).  I don’t care how 12-0 Green Bay is.  We’re doing fine, and we here at GSEZ are pretty sure it’s going to get better before it gets worse, we can definitely do this second Lombardi party, and we’ve got three reasons.

-o-o-o-o-o-

First, despite Claude’s largely accurate but perhaps bleakish, half-full assessment of Gregg Williams (n/k/a The Family Practitioner) last week, the defense is no longer getting steamrolled by the better offenses like it was earlier in the year.  It’s still giving up yards, and points, but it’s noticeable that the defense as a whole is doing a better job, for longer periods of time during games, over the last six weeks:

Colts:  nothing until we were up 31-0.
Rams:  held the Rams at bay for the entire first half, until the inexplicable team-wide meltdown in the last two minutes that cost us the game, in the worst effort in Payton’s six year run.
Bucs:  the Bucs had nine points with five minutes to go, and only got their TD on a gift call.
Falcons:  at home, the Falcons only had 13 points with seven minutes to go; the offense’s inability to stick the knife in hurt, and that 10-point collapse was inexcusable, but you can’t just ignore the first 53 minutes.
Giants:  up 35-10 after three quarters, enough said.
Lions:  up 17-0, and then 24-7 at the half; I know they ran up and down the field on us in the second half, but Detroit is 8th in the NFL in yards per game and 4th in points per game, and they only finished with 17.

I’m not going to bother with yards allowed or points per game totals.  At this point, we have a sense of the talent level (DL OK but no pass rushers at all, LBs are at this point just a collection of journeymen, and the DBs all pretty decent but without any one or two great playmakers), the coaching style (The Family Practitioner), and what they’re trying to accomplish (keep the game in front of us, stop the run, stop the big play, don’t worry about first downs between the 20′s, because the other team will stop themselves just often enough for us to get a two-score lead).   If you go back and look at the yardage totals and points allowed in the back half of the 2009 season, or the defensive stats this year of some of the league’s better franchises like New England and Green Bay, it will keep things in perspective a little.  This defense can’t carry a bad offense, but we don’t have a bad offense, so they don’t have to.  They just have to keep it together.  That’s life in the modern NFL.

 I might feel just a little better if I got the sense that we were really starting to have the ability to close games out, like we didn’t do against Atlanta.  We should be in more of a position to turn loose a four man pass rush and some tighter pass defense to close a game out, and as did not happen against the Falcons and to a lesser extent the Lions.  In the playoffs, you are pretty much guaranteed to see talented and experienced QBs on the other side of the line, and that’s one area where we’ll need to find some more juice in the next four weeks.  

-o-o-o-o-o-

Second, the offense has pretty much stopped turning the ball over.  Although we remain minus 2 in the giveaway/takeaway department, only three teams (GB, SF and Houston) have fewer turnovers than the Saints, and we’ve only had one little turnover in the four games since that Rams debacle, a brilliant pick of QB Drew Brees by Bucs CB Ronde Barber almost a month ago.  The reasons are varied:  the OL has solidified with the re-installation of Brian De La Puente as the starting center and the return of  Zach Strief to RT and kept Brees very comfortable; ball discipline has been an emphasis since training camp; we’ve had better offensive balance, and leads, so Brees hasn’t had to press.  Really, the key is the improved play and discipline of Brees; not only are there fewer INTs, there have only been a handful of  Brees  passes in the last month that were even risky, where he gets that “force it” disease and some ball pops up in the air in the opposing secondary and you just hold your breath.  (Mind you, when that happens when we’re on defense, you don’t even get excited, because you KNOW that ball’s hitting the ground.)   If we’re not turning the ball over, we’re not losing.

As a side note, relating back to our first point, the defense is starting to get more takeaways, in addition to its improved overall play.  Three INTs in the last three games, it’s just a trickle, but the takeaways have to start somewhere, right?

-o-o-o-o-o-

Third, and probably most important, this team has just about developed its identity, and the framework is in the two points above.  The defense just needs to fight a holding action:  get a stop here, give up a TD there, get a turnover here, force a FG there, don’t get burned repeatedly, keep the game in hand.  Meanwhile, the offensive line is playing a physical, consistent brand of football that allows us a very solid running game while keeping a clean pocket for Brees, who in turn is playing the best ball of his career while smartly taking sacks instead of trying to make a play every play. 

The thesis, very simply, boils down to this:  even if we don’t get many takeaways, as long as we don’t give the ball away, we’ll win the battle of the ”who’s better at 80-yard drives” contest against anybody in the league over a 60-minute period.

This team is no longer searching for an identity, as in late 2008 (when we found the running game that ended up a key springboard to 2009 success), or all last year right through the fourth quarter of the playoff loss to Seattle (post-Super Bowl where-is-my-motivation-to-top-last-year haze).  I can’t guarantee it, but I feel more like this team has a shot at a monster finish than a Haslett-era late-season collapse, or even a Mora-esque one and done playoff whimper.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Where does this all leave us, 12 games into the 2011 season?  One of our favorite metrics in separating the players from the wannabes is your record, and net points, in games against the other good teams.  At the three-quarter pole of the 2011 NFL season, you can see the gaps in records against other playoff contenders, i.e. the kinds of teams you’ll play playoff games against, and net points in those games:

The playaz:
Green Bay, 6-0, plus 70
Baltimore, 6-1, plus 67
SAINTS, 5-1, plus 58

The couldbes:
New England, 4-2, plus 34
Pittsburgh, 4-3, plus 26
Chicago, 3-2, plus 10
San Francisco, 3-2, plus 5
Houston, 3-3, plus 21

The wannabes:
Oakland, 4-2, minus 3
Detroit, 3-5, minus 28
Atlanta, 2-4, minus 26
Denver, 3-4, minus 47
Dallas, 1-3, minus 8
NYGiants, 1-3, minus 31
Tennessee, 2-4, minus 54
NYJets, 1-4, minus 54
Cincinnati, 1-5, minus 42

You can play with the groupings if you want (Houston’s and Chicago’s QB situations, Steelers are hot and maybe should be in the top group based on QB and history, etc.), but I think they work pretty well.  If anything, it should calm your soul about how good this team is now, and can be for the balance of the regular season and beyond.  Finally, at least for me, it’s taken away my big concern that we weren’t going to get that precious first-round bye that I was putting so much weight on.   This is one of the three best teams in the league, and there’s no team we can’t play with, our place or theirs.

-o-o-o-o-o-

As far as this Sunday’s game against the Titans, this is an outdoor road game against a 7-5 team that is middlin’ in pretty much all respects, give up plenty of yards but not too many points (of course, they get to play Jacksonville and Indy twice….), move the ball a little but don’t light up the scoreboard.  (Side note:  the Saints are a four-point road favorite, which is the same spread for the 49ers on the road against a hapless Arizona.  Hmmm.)  Before I started thinking about it, I was worried about “road game”, “trap game”, “other team has a great running back”, “we’ll be flat,” and all that other ****, but now I think we’re past all that, and I expect us to continue the formula:  keep the game in hand, package a couple of stops with a couple of lightning quick Touchdown Drives for a 14- or 21-point second quarter burst to totally change the arc of the game, and ride that lead home.

Also, much like the Ravens game near the end of 2010, I’m not really sure the result here matters, as much as the test tube for an outside game prior to the playoffs.  Unless the 49ers somehow drop two games, we’re not getting the no. 2 seed, and their schedule is frightfully easy down the stretch.  And as far as the NFC South, even if we lose to the Titans and Falcons, we win the division as long as we beat the Vikings and Panthers, and if we can’t do that you can throw everything else out the window, along with everything I think I know about the Saints.  So I’m not fretting Sunday or the score too much, as long as nobody gets hurt.

Saints 34, Titans 24.

WHO DAT.

8-8 last week, 95-86-11 overall.  Need a little run here to get away from the vig.

First, please accept our apologies for the temporary technical difficulties last week; as you can see, thanks to our friendly neighborhood hosting service, we are back on line.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Please don’t think we’ve been asleep during the bye week.  A lot of what we’ve been doing is health care-related, trying to figure out the exact proper dosage of Jim Beam that’s going to be necessary the next time we have to ask our defense to protect a lead in a mission-critical road game.  Right now, my best guess is something like six ounces, or two doubles, for one seven-minute game stretch of football that will last about 20 minutes in real time.

The reason we’re checking the bourbon metrics is that it makes more sense than the following syllogism:

Major premise:  In critical sports situations, you want your best players on the field.

Minor premise:  The worst position group by far of the 2011 Saints, based on talent and results (if you believe any of the stats we’ve seen from various sources since Labor Day), is the linebackers.

Conclusion:  In protecting a hard-earned 10-point lead over Atlanta with seven minutes to go, I would make sure that LBs Scott Shanle, Jo-Lonn Dunbar and Jon Casillas were on the field together for every last ******* one of the defense’s final 23 plays.

Madonn’!…. *facepalm*

As enjoyable as beating the Falcons always is, for 2011 we’ve always wanted more.  We want(ed) this to be a great team, one clearly capable of a championship….and once again we failed to make the leap.  Up 17-13 in the third, we had numerous shots to go up by 11 points and force the Falcons in effect to need two TDs to beat us.  Instead, settling for field goals, we left the door open for them, a door our defense absolutely failed to shut, as the Falcons were down 23-13 at their own 19 with seven minutes left, and just a little while later we were damn lucky we didn’t lose in regulation.   Oddly, the one conclusion I reached watching those last two Falcons drives in regulation told me not so much about the 2011 Saints in particular as this:  Gregg Williams is nothing special as a defensive coordinator.

-o-o-o-o-o-

The basis for my Helen Keller-level epiphany was seeing all three linebackers on the field for every play of the final two drives.  And then it struck me:  The Witchh Doctor is not a witch doctor, nor is he a complete Quackk, as my man Patronius has posited in the past.  Instead, he’s sort of a family practitioner whose only nostrum is bringing some kind of blitz, or not.  He learned it as defensive coordinator under Jeff Fisher, in the shade of the Buddy Ryan defensive coaching tree, and he’s not got much else.

He left all three LBs in a 3-3-5 defensive package in the final two drives against the Falcons’ spread offense, with three WRs, TE Tony Gonzales and a back in the game, and the only possible reason I can think of is that to blitz, or not to blitz, you have to have linebackers, otherwise you cannot blitz or not blitz.

Of course, the results were disastrous.  In the first drive, the Falcons went 81 yards in a crisp nine plays.  On the seven pass plays, we only rushed more than three twice, and one of those was a softer mush-rush, and we got zero pressure from three DLs.  Falcons QB Matt Ryan was 6 of 7 for 77 yards and a TD, throwing mid-level passes easily over the LBs.  While some of me would like to give Williams credit for not going all blitz-happy, it was staggering to watch him leave three linebackers in no-man’s land against a spread offense with three WRs and maybe the greatest pass-catching TE of all time, while the opposing quarterback stood in the pocket simply waiting for someone to clear the LBs at the second level and turn for the ball.

The next drive, Williams figured he’d better try getting more pressure on Ryan, and plus ca change.  Having the LBs crowd the line and rush….fooled no one.  The Falcons started at their six-yard line with 1:55 to go, the Saints sent six, five, five (including SS Roman Harper just to spice it up) and six rushers, and in just four plays, the Falcons went 61 yards to our 33 yard line.   Thankfully, we were able to slow them down just enough to keep them out of the end zone, blitzing five, six or seven on all but two of the final seven plays, but not until they were at our nine-yard line and had had three shots into the end zone.

A bunch of questions I just can’t even speculate at good answers for:

Why were so many of our worst defensive players in the game for that entire critical stretch?

If we’re going to play a little prevent (as on the first drive), why aren’t we in a basic dime package (six DBs, one LB to spy on the back and four DLs) against their spread offense?

If SS Roman Harper is a bit of a liability in coverage but so versatile rushing and in the box, why can’t he be one of the LBs if you have to play a 3-3-5?

If we got DT Shaun Rogers to provide pressure up the middle, why do we make him do it in a three-man line where he’s guaranteed to see a double team?

On the second drive, why were we sending six guys and leaving the slot receiver open on three consecutive plays?

There’s only one place to lay this:  Gregg Williams.  And none of it’s the mark of a great defensive coordinator.  There is simply no excuse for being so helpless in such a critical situation, especially when you are getting beat with your worst players on the field.

-o-o-o-o-o-

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Williams is pretty much a one-tool guy.   And when the only tool in your box is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  If it doesn’t involve bringing pressure, or not bringing pressure, he’s not…..bringing anything.  I struggle to remember when we succeeded on defense because we took away somebody’s best player.  This year alone, for example, Andre Johnson almost beat us, Matt Forte kept the Bears as close as he could,  Steven Jackson did beat us, and we almost let Matt Ryan beat us throwing medium-range passes over the middle, and there’s not a whole lot else he can do.

And we’ve been beaten by too many damn rookie/journeyman quarterbacks the last couple of years when all they managed to do was not screw up with the ball.

We just blitz, or not.  And while it’s fine, and it sure worked like a charm in 2009, it’s not as much as we thought, or we hoped.

-o-o-o-o-o-

You might think to blame our talent, or the front office, if you would, but I do see a whole bunch of high draft picks on defense in rounds one and two since 2008 (DBs Tracy Porter, Malcolm Jenkins, Patrick Robinson, and DEs Sedrick Ellis and Cam Jordan), as well as some solid FA signings (FS Darren Sharper, CB Jabari Greer, DTs Shaun Rogers and Aburayo Franklin), so I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.

More to the point, if you look back over Williams’s career as a defensive coordinator (Tennessee 1997-2000, Washington 2004-2007, Jacksonville 2008, New Orleans 2009-present), and throw in the results of Buffalo while he was head coach from 2001-2003, what you get is a guy with a middlin’ track record.  We surveyed his 15-year career as DC or HC, and where his team ranked, on average, in a number of our favorite key defensive stat categories over that period, and here’s what we got:

Yards allowed per game:  14th
Points allowed per game:  15th
Opponents’ passer rating:  18th
Takeaways:  22nd
Third down % conversion allowed:  14th

[There's some good raw data here if you're interested as well -- http://www.pro-football-reference.com/coaches/WillGr0.htm ]

He’s had one great defense (2000 Titans, one of the best ever), some good ones (Washington 2004-2005), a whole bunch of middling ones, some that weren’t as good as they looked (New Orleans 2009-2010, in particular the latter), but 15 years gives you a lot of data, and what these data say in unison is “He’s a little above average.”  One thing that stands out is the myth that pressure causes takeaways — if it does, why are his teams historically well below-average in that category, finishing six (!) times in 15 years at 30th or worse in the league?

The bottom line is that with all the past data, and what I finally think I see now, I’m not smelling greatness.  I’m sniffing an aroma of decency with a whiff of very goodness, but not much more.  To be fair, being consistently just above average is really better than that, since the bottom guys are wannabes who shuffle out every three or four years or so, so it’s really a pool of 40-50 you’re finishing 15th out of overall, but still.  In any event, for all the 15 past years and two Sundays ago, the message is clear that I need to temper my expectations of Gregg Williams, n/k/a the Family Practitioner, for good.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Hey, we’re still 7-3, and there’s six games to go.  The defense (barring that late collapse) has been showing real signs of life and strength over the last three games, not world-beating strength, but more than earlier in the season.  There’s still time, and some optimism, and we’re healthy to boot, so we’re hardly giving up on the season.  And if Williams has any magic left, we’ll be at home four of the last six games, and now’s the time.

The Goat will be around later with various and sundry and a look at the Giants.  Until then,

GO SAINTS GO!

]]> http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/2011/11/27/the-report-rating-your-physician-edition/feed/ 3