Underhill article: “Saints moves are telling us what they felt the real problem with the team was last season”

SoggyBottomBoy said
It's actually more cool to say "injuries are just an excuse" and "every team has injuries." ;) I buy a lot of what you're saying about lack of depth, but no team was overcoming the number of injuries we sustained. They may not have gone on a 7-game losing streak but their season would have been derailed. See S.F. Niners. Prior to the season the defending NFC champ Niners were the NFC gold standard along with the Lions. They were widely predicted to repeat their success - injuries derailed their season with no playoffs.

On the flip side, you're correct in that good teams and teams with depth are better equipped to overcome them. The Lions are a good example you mentioned. They were so good they were able to overcome their Dline being ravaged with injuries, until they couldn't - in the playoff loss to the Commanders, their offense kept pace as their defense was getting killed, but their stellar offense kept them alive. But their margin of error was very thin against top tier teams in the playoffs due to the injuries. Yes, they had a lot of turnovers in that game but due to pressing to try to keep up with the points their defense was surrendering.

Injuries was the main factor especially to key positions and the number of them. You're correct in that our rash of injuries exposed a thin team regarding depth. And either we just have terrible luck regarding injuries or we're doing something terribly wrong in preparation. I hope it's the latter and it gets corrected. 🙏

So, an inordinate amount of injuries, lack of depth and an inept, floundering head coach could not be overcome. One positive result that I know you're pleased with was the change in coaching. Even with all of the injuries, Rizzi KK got better play out of the patchwork team, so that's an indication that it was more than injuries.

That's why it baffles me how so many here can make definitive evaluations about the players on our team based on last year's play. We simply cannot not truly evaluate players from last year because of the extreme number of injuries. The most we can gleen is how well some of them reacted to such adverse conditions and showed some fight and determination.

So with all of that, we were not a good team despite injuries. I had this debate with one of my employees. My points are:

Everyone has a job to do. Not just the players, but the entire staff. Every coach needs to on their game, coaching every single player. The strength and conditioning coach, needs to be getting the players ready for a rigorous season. They also need to make sure that those players are recovering properly. The diet and nutrition staff needs to make sure that our players are provided with all of the healthy foods, to replenish their bodies. The HC needs to make sure that all of the staff is doing their job. He needs to bring it all together during the week and gameday. He also decides what systems he wants and correctly identify talent for starting spots and depth. The GM gives the HC what he needs to build his team. The team that executes all of this, is typically the team that wins it all. No one told DA to run with just Jazzy J and Rattler. No one told him to only rely on two good WRs and question marks behind them. I literally said before the season “if one of our WRs gets injured, then we are screwed”, but everyone told me that KK’s system only used 2 WRs and the rest blockers etc etc.
No one told DA to continue not focus on the offensive side of the ball. He thought his defense would’ve held up for another year. Shouldn’t make assumptions like that.

Our team, in hindsight, was not going to be competitive bc we had way more questions than answers.

Point blank, it was not just injuries. It was a jambalaya of stuff that we were lacking and it didn’t take long for it to surface. I remember when McCoy went down. 98% of this board was on melt level orange. All the sky is falling, we are screwed yada yada. Now, if most of yall saw and felt that way bc of one singular injury, then that means yall had zero confidence that our team could weather the storm. That my friends, proves that we were not a good team. If you can’t at least have some confidence during injuries, then your team is not good.