- This is a better team than last years team, however they aren't so talented that they can overcome beating themselves.
-I've not been impressed w/ Shaheed in space. His running ability w/ the ball in his hands on jet sweeps and quick screens leaves a lot to be desired, in fact I'm surprised by his ineffectiveness relative to his return ability. He attemps to take a lot of plays wide and gets run out of bounds. He currently looks like a #3 option, not the #2 they were hoping he'd become.
-I've been impressed w/ the improvent of Olave, he's not much of a redzone threat but his ability to make big time conversions when Carr needs them has stood out to this point, especially in this last game.
-Taysom is a big part of their ability to create favorable matchups, so when we lose him we lose some of our effectiveness. We start to use more shotgun and 11 personnel and we're down a receiving threat to make that work. Saints will likely have to make a trade and I'd look for it to happen sometime this month.
-I'm disappointed in the ineffectiveness of Juwan Johnson. Perhaps it's because of the time he missed and because of that he didn't get worked in during camp, but it's inexcusable at this ponit.
- The Passrush isn't what we thought it would be and I think DA will have to blitz more, the issue is I'm not so sure the safety talent is deep enough to hold up. The CB's can live in that world but I don't fully trust our safeties in man coverage in those scenarios.
-The run defense....meh. The best run defense will be the offense giving us a 7-10 pt lead. We just aren't stout enough on the interior as we've been in the past and I'm beginning to not be fond of Todd Grantham as the DL coach. He's got time to turn it around but if were looking at last years production and then what we've seen now, they don't look improved in any specific area.
- Kendre has a bit more long speed than Kamara, the Saints can potentially generate more explosive plays sans Shaheed if they can get him going in the ground game. He's a guy that I think can get some chunk yardage if things are blocked up well enough.
-The 1-9 Record in tight games is interesting becaue only 3 of them have come with Allen has HC and he's responsible for the only win vs the Titans last year. A solution that I hope he employs is they add a bonus period during practice, much like he did w/ our Redzone woes last year. We saw immediate improvement after that.