Clay's Jock Strap
TRK's Hero
Good luck figuring out the Saints' D. They are a bit of an enigma even for someone who has watched every game. Part of that is definitely due to injuries. When you have a stretch where 4 of 5 of your best corners were out, it's going to have an effect on the way the entire D plays. I think that is especially true for this G. Williams D, which puts a lot of stress on the CB's.
Beyond that, we have grown accustomed to the D allowing scores early and then adjusting later in the game. It's certainly not a good habit to have, but it is what it is. They do seem to make the plays and capture momentum at critical points in the game.
You may hear people talking about the Saints' D as smoke and mirrors. I don't know exactly what that means, but I do agree that we make up for a lack of true dominance with aggression and schemes. But that's not a bad thing, it's not like we had a choice between a truly dominating D and the one we have.
We made the improvements through personnel changes that we could, but there is only so much you can do in a season. We have made a HUGE upgrade in the secondary. That unit has gone from pathetic to a real strength.
From what I have noticed with this Saints D, they rely on 2 things and to win today IMO they need to do both. One is to create turnovers - that allows you to bend but not "break" and allows the Saint's machine-like offense to often put the opposition in position where they need to play catch up (or keep up) which leads to even more TOs. The second thing is that they play extremely physical - hitting hard, which gets into the head of the offense, wears them down and leads back to point #1, TOs.
With that offense they don't need a dominating defense. But the two units definitely feed off of one another.