Reality Bites

Yeah. Yeah. Most of the prognosticators are jumping for joy as they see the Saints fall to 3-1. Me I'm happy too, but for another reason. The Saints are 3-1!! Most people get hung up in the negativity of a loss, but there is no reason to be down about one game. They came mighty close to being 4-0 with a missed field goal and a defensive stop on 3rd down which could have changed the outcome.

So where do we stand? It looks mighty promising as the Saints spend the next few weeks at home against: Tampa Bay, Philly, (Bye), and then the mighty Ravens. Many analyst are going to say the Saints don't have a chance with the second toughest schedule in the league, but I differ. I like our chances over the next few weeks, and especially like our chances against the Ravens if they're still undefeated when they come into town. I'll save that for a later posting, but for now we have some things to address:

1. Our run defense has to tighten up. It looks like whenever we play a team with a dominate wide reciever our safety has to stay out of the box which creates an issue for us stopping other teams running games. We played awesome against Atlanta, but gave up too many big runs against Carolina. This happened with some of their backup lineman in the game.
2. I thought for that for the most part we held Steve Smith in check. You have to play him aggressive and that's what we did.
3. Our offense line needs help shoring up our running game, whether it's an extra tight end or fullback we need to run the ball more. Payton abandoned the running game early on figuring that the passing game was too open to try anything else. I think he realized the importance of a running game in a closely, hard hitting divisional game like this one. You keep pounding it everytime you have a chance in the hopes to wear down the defense to get that big run; like Carolina did in the 4th quarter. Duece McAllister even admitted after the game that the offense wasn't balanced enough. For those that don't understand Duece language he meant to say, "Give me the ball more."
4. Don't sweat Reggie. People are already sweating Reggie Bush because he didn't score again this weekend. Get over it. The kid is being used so many different ways I feel that his biggest contribution to the team sometimes comes as a decoy. Being that said, I still would love to see him come out of the backfield more and catch a pass because their is no linebacker in the league that can catch him. Lastly on the Reggie-wagon. The Saints need to seriously address the way he handles the ball. He has a tendency to hold it out in the open and should have the ball tucked under his arm tightly. This has been something that I noticed in preseason that they kind of addressed, but needs to be brought up again. Doubters don't worry Reggie is going to do great things. Be patient. It's a marathon not a sprint. By the way, anyone trying to match Reggies numbers to Lawrence Malroney or Maruice Drew is just plain stupid. At this point in his career Reggie is not going to be a 25-30 carry back because we have Duece and it keeps him fresh. If you don't understand what I'm talking about think about this. the Saints never drafted Reggie to be the only back they drafted him because he is weapon at so many positions. That's why he will never have the rushing numbers of a running back, but will have the receptions of a receiver.

That's all for analysis. I guess it was good for me to listen to the game on the radio rather than go to a bar and watch. It kind of brings me back to the good old days of the blackout games at home when I used to listen to Henderson and Archie. By the way I will attempt to explain in my next posting why Frank Wattlet is my favortie Saint of all-time.