There’s no denying that the Saints sucked ass in 2007. They were terrible. 2006 was a fluke resulting from nobody taking them seriously. 2007 exposed the Saints for what they are, a slightly-below-average team with a great QB, exactly one legit wideout, no running game and no defense whatsoever.

So why is it that I’m about to deny all of that?

Could it be because it’s bullshit?

Or is it because I’m a homer? Actually, it’s plenty of both. But let’s focus on the former.

Let’s start with the offense, because one of the founding principles upon which I base my life is "The longer you can put off vomiting, the better."

It’s no secret that the offense regressed last year. Total offense dropped from 1st in the league to 4th. Scoring dropped from 5th to 12th. But why did it regress?

Was it because the Saints couldn’t run the ball because Dulymus got hurt and Reggie couldn’t carry the load? Well, kinda. The thing is, Reggie wasn’t really asked to "carry the load" after Dulymus went down. He only had 13.1 rushing attempts per game last year, or only 3.4 additional carries vs. 2006. And you might be surprised to find out that Reggie’s yards per carry actually improved in 2007.

Sure, it was only an improvement of 0.1 yards per carry, but the point is that contrary to popular opinion, Reggie didn’t collapse under the weight of being thrust into the "feature back" role. For one thing, he was never really thrust into that role in the first place. (Stecker Ace and Peter Tom combined for 10 more carries than Reggie.) And secondly, he wasn’t any less effective as a rusher last year than he was in 2006. In fact, he was slightly (very slightly) better. The other side of that coin is that he wasn’t a very good rusher in 2006, and the "improvement" I just referred to is all but statistically insignificant.

In fact, the Saints rushing game overall accounted for exactly the same yards per carry as it did in 2006. The problem is that it was 3.7 yards per carry both years. And that sucks in any year. The reason the Saints’ cumulative rushing yards went from 19th in the league to 28th is because Sean Payton chose not to run the ball. And the 3.7 yards per carry is why I don’t necessarily blame him for that.

You could argue, as our friends Mr. Clio and the late Dr. Morris did, that Coach Payton shouldn’t have waited as long as he did to give Pierre Thomas the damn ball. And in hindsight (mine, not theirs, because they were all over it from the get go) there’s plenty of merit to that position. Pete was by far the Saints’ most effective rusher last year, putting up 4.8 yards per carry. If we were to pull some hypotheticals out of our asses and assume that Pete could have maintained that average over 16 games at 20 carries per, he’d have put up 1536 yards.

The problem is that Coach Payton couldn’t afford to pull that kind of hypothetical out of his ass. In the absence of Dulymus, Coach Payton could give the ball to his billion dollar touchdown-waiting-to-happen superstar and hope that the light goes on sooner than later, or give it to his reliable (if not particularly productive) grizzled veteran, or give it to his god of a quarterback and pass all day, or he could assume great things out of an undrafted rookie. The last is the lowest percentage play of the bunch. It just so happens that it might very well have been the best play, we’ll find out as Pete gets more carries, but I don’t think it’s fair to a head coach to expect him to just hand the ball to an undrafted rookie until he has no other choice. This year, there should be no such hesitance.

This is going to sound counterintuitive, but as you know, I love making counterintuitive arguments. Argubaly the bigger issue was in the passing game, and it has little to do with being "pass happy." In fact, I’ll assert that the problem was that Coach Payton played it too conservatively in 2007.

In 2006, the Saints were 5th in passing attempts and 1st in passing yards. Last year, the Saints were 1st in attempts and 3rd in yards. Their net yards per pass attempt dropped a full yard, from 7.5 to 6.5. Devery Henderson dropped off the map. Pass plays of 20+ yards dropped from 65 to 47 and plays of 20+ dropped from 20 to 8.

You could argue that Reggie’s drop in yards per reception (8.4 to 5.7) has something to do with his habit of stepping out of bounds before anyone gets within three yards of him. Then again, you could also blame it on constantly putting your "playmaker" in a position where he always has a thin white tackler who runs the entire length of the field on one side of him. When you’re trying to get a guy "in space" so that he can make plays, doesn’t it defeat the purpose to constantly put a sideline in his way? But it wasn’t just Reggie. With the exception of the tight end position, everybody’s yards per reception dropped.

What all of that indicates to me is that Coach Payton deliberately reeled in the passing offense, probably in an attempt to simulate the ball control factor you usually get from a strong running game and ultimately protect his horrific defense. It didn’t work. All it did was waste a bunch of time that could have been spent scoring.

The good news is that every single "problem" with last year’s offense can be remedied by simply making different playcalling decisions. Start going down the field again in the passing game. Give the ball to Dulymus if he’s able, and Pierre if he’s not. Stop trying to force Reggie’s square peg into a round hole. Get him off the sideline and into the middle of the field. Let him return more punts and kicks. All these things have worked before, and they require no new personnel.

Last year may not have worked out, but it further underscored Coach Payton’s pragmatism. He passed a lot because it worked. He rushed less because it wasn’t working. He tried a shorter passing attack vs. 2006’s more aggressive, wide open game in an attempt to keep the defense off the field. Even though the result might not have been what was intended, the reasoning behind the tweaking was sound.

Based on that proven pragmatism on Payton’s part, we can be confident that the Saints’ offense this fall will return to what worked and abandon what didn’t. We don’t even need to worry about whether or not Dulymus is still a viable NFL tailback, or whether or not Meachem can play, or whether or not Reggie will ever be a top-tier tailback. All that stuff is gravy. The important thing is whether or not Coach Payton will make the proper adjustments to the offensive gameplan. He has given us little reason to believe that he won’t.

On the other side of the ball, it’s a taller order. Before we can start contemplating the notion of the Saints having a defense that even resembles stout, we first have to somehow stop vomiting. Then we have to shower, brush our teeth and gargle several times. There’s just no way to sugarcoat the abomination of a defense the Saints fielded last year. Still, I’m going to give it the old college try.

We can start again with Coach Payton’s pragmatism. In 2006, the Saints couldn’t stop the run for shit, and a lot of the success opponents had running was right over Will Smith. Meantime, statistically, they had the 3rd best pass defense in the league. Somewhere deep down, most of us (but not necessarily me) knew that it was a mirage. Still, the stats don’t lie. And theoretically, that pass defense had been improved with the addition of Jason David. In hindsight, the Jason David Experience was a spectacular failure. But at the time, it was assumed that he’d be an upgrade.

Last year, the run defense improved from 23rd to 13th. And the argument that "teams didn’t have to run on them because they could just pass all day" is a non-starter. Teams only ran on the Saints 10 fewer times in 2007 than 2006. The improvement was legitimate. But it came directly at the expense of the pass rush. They robbed Peter to pay Paul. And why wouldn’t they, given what the circumstances looked like after 2006? It was sound reasoning that turned out not to yield the desired results. Lesson learned. Again, this can be remedied simply by making different decisions.

Unfortunately, as we all know, the problems on defense were a hell of a lot bigger than that. And they’re the kinds of problems that do require new personnel. Preferably personnel that doesn’t suck. But the good news is that the Saints added two bonafide studs right smack dab in the middle of that defense, and a handful of other role players who, at the very least, aren’t the guys who were there last year.

Going from Mark Simoneau to Jonathan Vilma at middle linebacker is like going from Rosie O’Donnell to Eliza Dushku. I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who doesn’t think that Big Sed is going to be an absolute monster right from day one. Seriously, if you can find a less-than-glowing assessment of Sed from a "legit" source, I’d love to see it. There’s absolutely no reason to think that this guy won’t make a tremendous impact at DT.

Meantime, while Hollis Thomas will be 34, and his ass has its own congressman, somehow he continues to play at a higher level than he had for his last half-decade in Philly. He’s due to hit a wall any minute now and become largely useless, but then again, I’ve been saying that for the last two years. At least now, we don’t have to worry about it so much.

I’m also very excited about the prospect of the rumored 3rd down speed unit on the defensive line, with Smith and Bobby McCray on the ends and Charles Grant moving inside next to either Big Sed or Brian Young. Clearly, it’s an experiment, and it remains to be seen how it works out.

On the other hand, let’s not fool ourselves into assuming that the Saints’ defensive backfield won’t continue to suck. The Saints’ only proven legit defensive back is on the wrong side of 30 and is recovering from an ACL. Let’s not even get started on the guy across from him. Roman Harper was benched at one point last season, and there’s near unanimous agreement that Josh Bullocks should have been benched as well. McKenzie’s return can’t be assumed, nor can his level of play if and when he does return. Meantime, Randall Gay is a career nickel. Usama Young is unproven, and Tracy Porter is a rookie.

If there’s one thing the defensive backfield has going for it, it’s an abundance of bodies, and youth. Young, Porter, Harper, Bullocks, David and Gay are all in their early to mid 20’s. All are still in the age range where significant improvement is possible. Even the oldest of the bunch, Gay, is coming off his best season as a pro. Then again, Gay is the only legitimately projectable upgrade among the DBs. And McKenzie’s status could completely negate that upgrade, or even trump it altogether.

So until we actually see it on the field, any projections of improvement from this unit are little more than wishful thinking. Unless you want to include the "they couldn’t possibly get worse" argument. But we’re talking about the Saints’ defensive backfield here… you’re not gonna really put it past them to actually sink lower, are ya?

The good news is that a legitimately ass-kicking front 7 can mask weaknesses in the defensive backfield to an extent. And there’s little room for argument against the idea that the front seven will be significantly improved.

Further good news is that if (when) Sean Payton re-embraces the idea that a 2-minute scoring drive is better than a 7-minute drive that ends in a punt, the Saints are more than capable of winning 31-28 as often as necessary.

The bottom line is that the 2007 Saints looked a lot worse than they really were. They blew it in week 5 vs. Carolina on an Olindo Mare miss –or– a block of yet another Olindo Mare FG attempt –or– a legitimate-but-never-enforced penalty on Jammal Brown for lining up too far off the line of scrimmage, which negated a touchdown. Not all three of those things had to go differently, just one. They also blew it in week 13 with "the reverse." I’m not going to call it "bad luck" because it wasn’t luck, it was the Saints shitting their pants. 

Still, both of those games were clearly in the bag, and had the Saints won both, they’d have gone to the playoffs over Washington. They weren’t far off. They’re a young team with a young head coach. There were numerous admissions last year by players and coaches alike that they had gotten into their own heads, and the symptoms of that were present frequently. Experience remedies those issues. Being humbled remedies those issues as well. Intangibles should swing back into the Saints’ favor this fall.

I look at the schedule, and I only see four games that right at this very minute I think the Saints are more likely to lose than win. Week 5 vs Adrian Peterson, week 8 vs. the whole London thing, one loss to either Carolina or Tampa, and at Chicago in December. Again. At night this time. I could also see the Saints finally beating the Bears for once, and splitting with both Carolina and Tampa. But since this is the Saints, who are always good for at least one unexpected kick to the crotch out of the blue, I’m going to throw in a wild card loss of a winnable game as well.

Prediction: 11-5, 1st place in the NFC South