c10x
Waterboy
Hi everyone.
I'm seeing lots of knee jerk reaction threads, and posts, and frankly I'm a little disappointed in the fan base. Not that I should expect anything different, but it is what it is.
I'll start with the obvious. Red zone efficiency killed us. We won the turnover battle, and started very strong, which are two things that I thought would be keys to victory. But ultimately, you can't win on the road, versus a very good team if you get 3's instead of 7's.
The entire offense clearly was lacking some explosiveness that Foster provides. I know some will say that the saints were lacking Colston and Vilma, but neither of those guys are as good as Foster. Foster is the reason we have an explosive offense, and that's not meant as any disrespect to Ben Tate. I thought Tate looked very good in spurts today, and is doing quite well considering its his 3rd regular season game. We really just needed some depth there, and Foster / Ward simply can't get back soon enough.
Tough loss, especially because I thought with about 11 minutes to go we were in a very good position to win the game. And to make matters worse, I thought we had everything we needed to go down the field and win the game at about 6 minutes to go. And we did. But we abandoned the run, and only took about 90seconds off the clock. I don't know how our coaches didn't look at the game clock and feel the momentum of the game, and say "we really, really shouldn't let Brees have 4+ minutes to drive on us with only a 1 point lead". That was inexcusable in my opinion, but at the same time at some point you just have to have faith in your defense. The problem is, this is professional football. When you go up against top tier teams, they have stars being paid millions to perform too.
And that really transitions me into my next major point. To the people freaking out... we just played the Saints. In New Orleans. And had them on the ropes for essentially the entire game. And it wasn't one of Brees' fluke bad games. Honestly, sometimes players like Brees and Brady and Manning and Rodgers go off completing 80% of their passes, shredding defenses. Thats why they are who they are. I like winning, and dominating good teams too. But I think what we learned today is that we CAN play with the best in the league, and we can win. We didn't today, but thats not because we can't. Its because we weren't deep enough at RB today to stay committed to running the ball. I never expected us to go undefeated, and if you are going to lose, I'd much rather it be in a game like this, against a good team, in a battle, than watch us fold against a team we shouldn't lose to.
I don't believe in moral victories. But I also don't believe in beating your guys up over good effort. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to a guy who plays as well as Brees did today.
I'm seeing lots of knee jerk reaction threads, and posts, and frankly I'm a little disappointed in the fan base. Not that I should expect anything different, but it is what it is.
I'll start with the obvious. Red zone efficiency killed us. We won the turnover battle, and started very strong, which are two things that I thought would be keys to victory. But ultimately, you can't win on the road, versus a very good team if you get 3's instead of 7's.
The entire offense clearly was lacking some explosiveness that Foster provides. I know some will say that the saints were lacking Colston and Vilma, but neither of those guys are as good as Foster. Foster is the reason we have an explosive offense, and that's not meant as any disrespect to Ben Tate. I thought Tate looked very good in spurts today, and is doing quite well considering its his 3rd regular season game. We really just needed some depth there, and Foster / Ward simply can't get back soon enough.
Tough loss, especially because I thought with about 11 minutes to go we were in a very good position to win the game. And to make matters worse, I thought we had everything we needed to go down the field and win the game at about 6 minutes to go. And we did. But we abandoned the run, and only took about 90seconds off the clock. I don't know how our coaches didn't look at the game clock and feel the momentum of the game, and say "we really, really shouldn't let Brees have 4+ minutes to drive on us with only a 1 point lead". That was inexcusable in my opinion, but at the same time at some point you just have to have faith in your defense. The problem is, this is professional football. When you go up against top tier teams, they have stars being paid millions to perform too.
And that really transitions me into my next major point. To the people freaking out... we just played the Saints. In New Orleans. And had them on the ropes for essentially the entire game. And it wasn't one of Brees' fluke bad games. Honestly, sometimes players like Brees and Brady and Manning and Rodgers go off completing 80% of their passes, shredding defenses. Thats why they are who they are. I like winning, and dominating good teams too. But I think what we learned today is that we CAN play with the best in the league, and we can win. We didn't today, but thats not because we can't. Its because we weren't deep enough at RB today to stay committed to running the ball. I never expected us to go undefeated, and if you are going to lose, I'd much rather it be in a game like this, against a good team, in a battle, than watch us fold against a team we shouldn't lose to.
I don't believe in moral victories. But I also don't believe in beating your guys up over good effort. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to a guy who plays as well as Brees did today.
.