re: Saints Salary Cap Discussion

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I get that it would have made Brees's cap hits even more obnoxious, but he's going to be here no matter what.

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With him we can roll as far forward as possible. Smith is the painful example of rolling money forward. He's gonna be $11mil worth of cap for 2013 & 14 combined... for a 32 year old with 18 sacks in his last 4 years. I won't mind a $20mil cap hit after Brees retires for who he is and what he has done here.

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Yeah, but where missing PT showed was the amount of pressure put on Drew Brees because none of our other backs can pass block well.

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total 3 sacks given up in the playoffs against the #9 sack and #20 sack defenses. People say that we need PT, but give ingram and khiry more time and they'll learn better. In limited snaps khiry had better numbers than PT 0.2 vs. 0.1

Using pff, it is so marginal, but I didn't see much pressure given up when I watched khiry and ingram.

First and foremost you look at pressures, not sacks(they are a part of pressures). Sacks are a very deceiving number.

Second, these numbers(PFF grades) are based off of a person watching the game and assigning points. It's not an exact science. If you actually watch the games you see PT throwing his body into the defender every time. He rarely misses. I've seen enough of Ingram to know he misses about a 3rd of the time.

You also might want to recheck what you're looking at. Ingram had a total of 14 pass blocking snaps out of 173(8%). Robinson had 3 out of 76(4%). So that AMAZING 0.2 for Robinson(a whole 0.1 higher than PT!) is based off of 3 snaps that he may not even had to do anything on.

Thomas had 73 out of 578(12.6%), but more importantly is the number of snaps he got because he can pass block. If Ingram and/or Robinson were trusted more PT would have a lot less snaps.

Hell Sproles isn't trusted to do it either with 14 out of 364(4%). They know his limitations and his strengths.

What I find sad is the number of pass blocking snaps Jed had and how poorly he was at it.

Other notes about those numbers, they are finally evening out Ingram in the pass and run game. Robinson is falling into the trap that Ingram was in, though he seems more able to power through despite teams being able to key on him more when he's in.

Yes I would LOVE for Ingram and Robinson to develop into all around backs, but they haven't yet and PT is the only one of those we have. Much like Strief and Meach were this year, PT goes under appreciated again.

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That's really not enough to make a difference.

A full point maybe.

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Right but what's even worse is, like blues and I said, it's based off of 3 snaps for Robinson.

I guess that means he didn't totally frick up 3 whole times!

Yeah I get that and it makes sense, especially where money is concerned. But just like I didn't want to see us go into the season with Brown as the starter, I don't want to see us go into the season without PT unless we get a replacement.

I'm not saying don't replace him. I'm just saying we have to get one first because what we have isn't it(at the moment).

Agreed, it is a huge gamble, but if the coaches saw or seen something in Ingram/Robinson in regards to blocking I wouldn't question it if we have seen the last of PT.

We just need to clear the house on RB, get a shady/JC/forte/rice RB that can do it all and have breakaway speed. All of our issues would be solved

I think ML is a financial genius, but the saints organization as a whole needs to take one page from belichick's book in knowing when to say bye to certain players when its time.

I think this is the year we need to start looking ahead and getting rid of some players. Starts with Graham. Tag him and trade him for 2 1sts or something amazing. Cut Smith and couple other guys. No restructures. Sign a big FA for offense if money permits it. Use the early part of the draft on offense in efforts to find a true #1 WR, OL, or whatever we miss in FA. We simply can't afford Graham. He needs to go. Sorry. Love you man but you're going to cripple us for a player who barely touches the ball 5-6x a game. Not worth it. He's not in on enough offensive plays to pay him top WR money. Maybe top TE I can see but not top WR. No way in hell he deserves that kind of money from us. Brees touches the ball every play so at least you can make an excuse for his cap figures.

Cut Thomas or Sproles(or both), cut Lance Moore, cut Smith, let Jenkins go, trade Graham. Work from there with whatever draft picks trades you can get done. It's time to get young and hit a homerun through the draft.

That's a pretty useless stat. You don't need to be catching the ball to make a huge impact, plus Brees has always spread the ball around. Look at the Pats game. They used their best CB and occasional safety help to shut down Graham. That's when it's time for our WRs have to step up and do their job while he makes life easier on them. Colston had one catch for 11 yards. Toon had one for 7. Meachem 0 catches. Stills, the only WR I really care to see on the team next season, had 3/64/1TD. And don't forget that he was playing on one foot for most of the season.

Calvin Johnson would be #1. Graham I think would be #2. Remember, before Graham was injured against NE, he put up:
4/45/1TD
10/178/1TD
9/134/2TD
4/100/2TD
10/135/0TD

I get where the "trade Graham" people are coming from if we get a great offer, but I'd rather see him come back healthy with some WRs and a running that can take the pressure off of him. Would also like to see better playcalling. He became the anti-Ingram later in the season. If he was in, we were passing. Even if he isn't a good run blocker, leave him in there all the time and you'll get more opportunities for mismatches when we do pass it.