Saints Tackling

bobad said

Did anyone notice a lot of poor tackling in the first half?

I thought we were in trouble when Jackson started running right through the first contact. If our tackling wasn't so poor, we could have held the Bills to 30-40 yards rushing.

We seem to have tightened up in the 2nd half, and it's a good thing.

Click to expand...

Jackson's a pretty good back. Remember those guys are paid lots of money, too.

The difference in rush defense this year vs. last year isn't so much tackling fundamentals. It's a more aggressive, pursuit-oriented defense that gets more guys to the ball. Now when a tackle is slipped, it doesn't result in a huge gain because there's other players in proximity to clean up. That's why our run defense is improved.

Tackles will be broken... this is the NFL. What you don't want is lots of missed open-field tackles, poor effort, or fundamentally flawed technique. Again, the difference is "population around the ball" (as GW says)... not tackling fundamentals (all of our guys are pretty good in this department).