Saints slighted? (1 Viewer)

[tjharris]

I had a guy following me down the aisles at Sams in Chattanooga TN extolling the wonderment of Peyton Manning.

ask him how many National Titles his great peyton has brought TN?
hint: it's one less then Super bowl rings hes got.

 

[tjharris]

Though I agree with the spirit of your post and think you made a number of good points, we were very good at running the ball last year. 6th in yards, 7th in yards per attempt, by any measure we were very good and that's a departure from previous years. Not dominant, but there wasn't a team as offensively balanced in football last year.

The other distinction that analysts aren't making is that while we were 26th in the NFL in terms of passing yards against, we had an excellent pass defense when we weren't fielding a secondary composed of Malcolm Jenkins, Chris McCalister, and Mike McKenzie. Even with those guys playing for significant stretches of the season, we still finished third in defensive passer rating and fared well in meaningful stats like completion percentage, YPA, and were outstanding at forcing turnovers. But if you only look at the yards number, which 99% of analysts do, you're going to come to a conclusion that simply wasn't true about the Saints pass defense. If one flaw of the media is failing to account for the fundamental change to a passing league, the other is failing to look at more meaningful numbers. Football has been among the slowest of sports to adopt advanced stats, and that's a shame.

I think our D was 2nd in takeaways and like 3rd or 4th in the red zone. Which is why I'll argue with anyone our D was top 10 last year. Damn the yards given up the only thing that matters is points on the board

 

[reason2believe]

I know some on here take the side that the Saints are being slighted/ignored by the national media; others, along with those same national media guys (Peter King, ESPN.com's Pat Yasinskas, etc.), say it's our imagination.

I was just watching a replay of NFLN's Total Access and before a commerical break, they said a report from Saints camp was next. When the show returned from commercial, there was a report on...COLTS camp, complete with interviews of the head coach and Peyton Manning. The Saints report came on the heels of the Colts report, complete with an interview of Reggie Bush. The order of the reports was not the big problem, however. All the sports networks don't IMMEDIATELY have a report they say is next when they return from commercial. It was the length of the reports that I noticed. I decided to use my DVR, which automatically records the last 90 minutes of a program, and time the two reports.

The score? Colts 2:24, Saints 0:55. These timings included introductory reports from the girl at the "desk" prior to the on site reports, the first desk report about no new contracts for the Colts holdouts and the second about Shockey's health.

Take it for what you will. But it's interesting that the teaser going to commercial was about a report from the camp of the Super Bowl winners, but the real time was spent reporting on the losers.

Yes, it's offseason, and I'm stirring the pot.

Who Cares??????