Saints defense stats through 5 games

Shoot, even if they settle in anywhere from 25-29 it's a win in my book.

Where do we rank if we exclude 40% of our games played or as we know it, weeks 1 and 2.

The defense has been improving. We will be middle of the pack after these next 4 games.

It's odd we have 2 top 5 cornerbacks and still have a low ranking pass defense. Our safety play has been dreadful.

It will get better if Williams gets out the doghouse or if Breaux is ready to roll in a few weeks. Either should be an upgrade at NB over KV. Vaccaro has regressed into a more athletic Roman Harper. He had no business trying to man up on Tate yesterday in the slot.

It's really a shade over 20 if you ignore the 2 non offensive TDs the lions had yesterday

I've never been a believer in penalizing for non offensive TDs but that's me

Either way there's been a good improvement for sure

These rankings are also not taking into account that most teams have played 6 games not 5.

I think it's pretty clear the first two weeks were mainly scheme issues and personnel decisions causing problems, not defensive talent.

Crowley over Harris is obvious. Also Robertson has been an improvement over Anxalone in the pass game.

And then the biggest reason for the improvement is the switch to man to man over zone. Not only do we suck at zone, but we're very good at man. And we're realizing we actually have a decent pass rush when guys aren't wide open in the secondary.

We don't play any offenses that could even kind of be deemed elite until the Redskins in Week 11. So it'll be interesting to see if we can keep looking good against mediocre competition.

You try Breaux over Crawley on the outside once he is FULLY healthy and keep rolling with the 3 safety set that has been working like gang busters the last 3 games (Vaccaro played 100% of the snaps, Marcus Williams missed 3 or 4 snaps total, and Bell played 61%, 87%, and 94% of the snaps).

If Breaux seems to be a downgrade you put Crawley back in.

Vaccaro has clearly been our best nickel since they stopped fricking around with trying to make him a deep safety after the Pats game (and if you want to complain about him on Gronk, the only two people I've ever seen cover him one on one the whole game and shut him done is Berry and Talib).

That was the turning point for the defense. Once Vaccaro went back to being strictly a nickel/box safety and Bell got more snaps at SS our defense improved greatly.

PFF's week 6 defensive team

The ONLY stat that matters is Pts/Game. The others are just for stat nerds.