Very recently Drew Brees was on NFL Network and essentially proclaimed the Saints are “Super Bowl-ready”. Whereas I agree with this for the most part, there are a couple things that the team needs to do to better increase their chances to compete with Seattle and San Francisco, who are widely considered (even by me) to be the most complete teams in the NFL. Not only do Seattle and San Fran draft extremely well, they are also pretty aggressive in free agency every year. We saw this from New Orleans this past offseason with the addition of Jairus Byrd.
The first thing New Orleans needs to do is step it up in their running attack. I feel like NOLA runs a similar system as WSU (Air Raid) and they don’t even need to. The Saints have several tough runners in the backfield that they could rely on more, but they choose to go with the safe and seemingly sure thing, Drew Brees. Seattle and San Francisco are a run-first team and then they rely on their young-gun QBs to sling it around. This is a good recipe for success when you have an excellent defense as they have both been to the Super Bowl using this formula, and one even won it all.
The second thing New Orleans should start doing more is building the defense first. Drew Brees is the captain and everyone in the country knows it. As long as #9 is taking the snaps for the Saints, their offense will always be one of the best in the league. This allows for Rob Ryan (or whoever the DC for NOLA is at the time) to be more aggressive in taking defensive players and developing them into the Richard Shermans or KJ Wrights. “Defense Wins Championships”, right? It’s completely true and we have seen it the past 3 Super Bowls (Seattle, Baltimore and the New York Giants). They all played exceptional defense and they ended up winning the big game.
Just a third thought as to what New Orleans should look into doing is being more creative. They just drafted Brandin Cooks from Oregon State who adds a huge spark to that offense, possibly moreso than Darren Sproles did in his tenure with the team. I would like to implore New Orleans to be creative with him. Use him as a Percy Harvin or Cordarrelle Patterson type of player to get the opposing defense off balance and then use Drew Brees to deliver a striking blow. That’s just my opinion, though.
Your thoughts?
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