thoughts the day after (1 Viewer)

Da Living Saint

Drew Brees!
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I wanted to take some time to reflect on the game a little bit before I said much about it, so here goes nothing...

1) Really proud of this defense. Allen installed a smart game plan, lost his #1 corner almost immediately, and his guys still executed the game plan at a high level. They kept us in the game and they're the reason we should've won. I think they established a baseline yesterday. Let Vaccaro roam around and cover the slot, with Byrd and Bell up high.

2) It's sort of related to #1, but I think the Allen hire was a good one. Say what you will about Payton rehiring Allen to wait around in case Ryan needed to be fired or that Payton hired his boy to fill the spot, but I think it's clear to this point that Allen knows what he's doing. He's in a terrible spot right now with injuries and this defense is still performing at a high level, Raiders 4th quarter not withstanding..

3) The Spiller move combined with Payton's fascination with Cadet continues to boggle the mind. Yeah I get that Payton was not happy that Spiller supposedly didn't know the playbook, but there's no way that dude couldn't have had a package of about 15 plays that he could've run along with returning kicks and punts. Would he have been overpaid at that point? Yes, but that's on the team not on him. Murphy's roster spot was tenuous all preseason, he lost his job in Week 1, and Lewis didn't impress me much as a return man. I understand that Cadet knows where to be, but I've seen him drop that out route in the flat enough times.

4) The Fleener move is a symptom of the disease in the Saints front office. It's been mentioned on this board ad nauseum. The Saints seem to think that they can fix flaws in players. I don't know if this playbook stuff was a problem for him in Buffalo, but making a guy who was an every down back into a satellite back just because he's fast seems like a bad move. Immediately after we signed him, the NFL media talked about his sketchy hands, lazy routes and inability to separate himself from Dwayne Allen (!) as Indy's #1 TE. Basically all those things have carried over to New Orleans except he's paid a truckload more. I don't think the Saints are doing proper due diligence in the FA market. They signed Byrd who was apparently already hurt, they signed Spiller assuming he'd pick up the playbook, and signed Fleener even with the above mentioned problems.

5) Fleener, IMO, is destined to be another FA bust but we have no one else to play TE so we may as well get used to him.

6) No excuse to only run the ball 13 times. We were having reasonable success. The Giants had less success running it than we did and they ran it 2x more than we did.

7) I have no confidence in Wil Lutz and not because of the block.

8) They need to keep Sterling Moore around longer. He played well yesterday, but I got some scrappiness and leadership tendencies from him. We need more of that.
 
5) Fleener, IMO, is destined to be another FA bust but we have no one else to play TE so we may as well get used to him.

Question about Fleener/our TE situation....why was it that we did not re-sign Ben Watson? Not that it matters now but I'm just curious as to why we didn't re-sign him after his most productive year ever only to pay big bucks for Fleener.
 
Question about Fleener/our TE situation....why was it that we did not re-sign Ben Watson? Not that it matters now but I'm just curious as to why we didn't re-sign him after his most productive year ever only to pay big bucks for Fleener.

we thought he wanted too much money then he ended up signing for peanuts with Baltimore.

it was a misread of the situation by all sides. Baltimore paid for a guy who was never going to be as good as he was last year again. We overpaid for a guy who was never good and is continuing to do the same things he did in Indianapolis. Watson left for a worse situation in Baltimore than he would've had here.
 
Question about Fleener/our TE situation....why was it that we did not re-sign Ben Watson? Not that it matters now but I'm just curious as to why we didn't re-sign him after his most productive year ever only to pay big bucks for Fleener.



From what I can recall, he is old and looking for a last big payday. The FO probably thought Cleaner would play at a high level for 5 plus years.
 
we thought he wanted too much money then he ended up signing for peanuts with Baltimore.

it was a misread of the situation by all sides. Baltimore paid for a guy who was never going to be as good as he was last year again. We overpaid for a guy who was never good and is continuing to do the same things he did in Indianapolis. Watson left for a worse situation in Baltimore than he would've had here.

Got it. Thanks for the info.
 

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