re: How do we feel about Marcus Williams after first quarter of season?

I thought this was very telling from the article, because it is the EXACT problem they started off having last year:

quote:

---

The difference between last week and the games where he tried to do too much, in Williams' opinion, was the Saints' commitment to simplifying the defensive scheme.

"We're just playing faster," Williams said. "Simplifying things, condensing things down and making things easier for us to read and play faster."

---

So two years in a row we come out trying to do too much with a defense that is too complicated starting off at the beginning of the year, instead of coming out more simple and THEN adding more complicated stuff in as the year goes on and the players gel.

Aside from that, on Williams himself it is often hard to tell how well he's doing because most of the time he isn't on the screen as he's playing 15-20 yards off. This puts him out of most plays (especially in run defense).

It has limited the big play vs. Cle (outside of when we stupidly ran cover 2 with Crawley as one of the deep players) and NY. It also helped keep Julio in check when he was shaded to him most of the game. But it takes away from his ability to ball hawk.