WaPo: How the Saints salvaged their secondary and became a legitimate NFC threat

boner

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The effects of a No. 1 cornerback aren’t as obvious on television as that of, say, J.J. Watt. When Watt slips past a guard and barrels toward a QB, the footage gets replayed from every angle as the announcers gush. When a top cornerback sits perfectly on a double move and forces the quarterback to hold the ball an extra half second to get to his next read, there’s no 30-second montage. It likely won’t even get mentioned. Yet the effects are similar.

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I like this passage.

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Frick. Why can't we just stay under the radar for a few more weeks...

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As long as the team stays focused, the radar won't be an issue. KV got the DBs gas masks. Says they can't makeup for 3 years of bad defense in 3 games.

ETA: Sterling Moore bought the gas masks..

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“In case y’all gas me up, I brought the gas mask,” Vaccaro told the media. “We just knew what the clippings were gonna say. We knew what questions y’all were gonna ask. ... We’re not believing no clippings, nothing. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

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LINK

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At the end of the day though, the single biggest reason this defense isn’t an aberration, and why it’s a different defense from years past, is their rookie first-round pick. The effects of a No. 1 cornerback aren’t as obvious on television as that of, say, J.J. Watt. When Watt slips past a guard and barrels toward a QB, the footage gets replayed from every angle as the announcers gush. When a top cornerback sits perfectly on a double move and forces the quarterback to hold the ball an extra half second to get to his next read, there’s no 30-second montage. It likely won’t even get mentioned. Yet the effects are similar.

That is what Marshon Lattimore has brought to the Saints defense that it hasn’t had since Keenan Lewis’s first year in New Orleans back in 2013.

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i kept trying to tell people who were melting over not getting a pass rusher

coverage creates sacks

Lattimore and Williams create coverage and we have Cam Jordan. sacks will come

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Vacarro is doing all the right things to get that fat extension as the leader of this young defense

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If things continue to improve, he continues...are you against giving it to him?

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Frick. Why can't we just stay under the radar for a few more weeks...

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i was kinda liking being under the radar too, I think the journalists are more pressed to report about the threat(s) in the nfc now that Aaron Rodgers is out and the path to the postseason isn’t as clear

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So our turn around has acctually coincided with us playing more zone? Seems like a lot of armchair quarterbacks were swearing our early season ills were caused by us playing too much zone. Interesting tidbit.

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well that and we're blitzing a shite ton more

blitzing gives QBs less time to wait for our DBs to fudge up

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blitzing gives QBs less time to wait for our DBs to fudge up

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Agreed. It works both ways. Give a NFL QB enough time be they will eventually find someone. Zone limits the yardage of those checkdowns.

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Seems like a lot of armchair quarterbacks were swearing our early season ills were caused by us playing too much zone.

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It's more about what the outside corners are playing, and they've been playing more man since the Minny game.

You're not going to play all man or all zone underneath with the LBs/nickel, and you are going to change up what the safeties do play to play.

But when they went with almost strictly cover 3/soft cover 2 with some way off man on long 3rds against the Vikes it ended badly.

Zone can be good if you mix in it with man, and unless you have 3 shutdown corners you're not going to play strictly man all the time. The key is to find the right balance and that was with our outside corners playing press man most of the time while changing coverages with everyone else.

Allen also seems to have changed the types of zone plays he's running (or maybe some of the guys like Harris and Anzalone were just consistently blowing coverage like Vaccaro was in deep zones).

We aren't allowing backs to run free near as much any more when going to zone. That was a frequent calling card of Allen since he came back. They'd play off zone and let the backs/TEs/under routes run free and try to run up and tackle from 10+ yards back.

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That Carolina 90+ yard TD drive was almost all zone, with an enormous cushion given underneath.

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Yeah it was freaking me out because I thought we would slip back to playing that all the time again but it was corrected by the next drive.

For whatever reason we decided to try to bleed clock by letting them get underneath stuff instead of what worked the rest of the game. Very odd decision.

He hasn't made the mistake since so I'm hoping it's all good. I have nightmares of backs running free all over us in the passing game.