I think Coach is reading, and you’re pissing him off and motivating him.

Nice work.

I don’t expect the Saints to put up 150-200 yds and all of a sudden turn into the Steelers or Titans. However, I’m convinced that this team can grind out 90-120 yds. per game.

We don’t run the ball well because we never commit to it, get frustrated when it we don’t get yards, and run very poor running plays. Payton uses the running game as a gimmick, a gadget, something as a sideshow–it’s not integrated into the game plan.

What pissed me off in the Bucs game is that not only did the Saints NOT run the football, the offense lined in with 3-5 WRs and an empty backfield. In other words, they didn’t even try and fool the Bucs into playing the run. They showed their hand each and every hand. Running the football takes patience, attitude, and a coach who is committed to sticking to it even if it means a few 3 and outs. It also takes a coach to call the right kind of running plays.

Another point is that this rhythm that we incessantly refer to with Drew and the receivers also applies to the offensive line. They can’t very well get better or improve their run blocking (which pretty much blows) by not running the football.

So no, I don’t quite believe that the Saints are completely incapable of running the football. I think we’re unable largely because we’re unwilling.

I’m still in the “we need to run the ball a little more” camp. But not to the degree that it’s 50-50, maybe more like 60-40 or 63-37.

For example, if Brees is throwing the ball 40 times in a game, that means we should be running the ball about 25 times.

I’m still cool with coach “Clever Trousers.” We just screwed the pooch too many times this year. We are on par with the rest of the NFC South, but the other three teams are pissing away games. Carolina and Tampa aren’t playing much better than us, just not as stupid. Hard as it is to admit, Atlanta is the most impressive. Well balanced and fundamentally sound. God, that was painful to type.

Philinwood, yeah, hard to argue with that. And for the record, I do wish Pierre would get more of a chance than roughly 10 carries a game, 4 or 5 times a season. By no means do I discount the possibility that Pierre is at least to a degree “the Answer.”

My rebuttal to that would be that so far, Pierre’s sample size is still really, REALLY small. And maybe that’s Sean Payton’s fault. But it’s still too small to make any kind of intelligent judgment (IMHO, anyway) about how he’d perform given a “full load” of 20 or so carries for a string of consecutive games. And as nice as those overall ypc stats look, there’s no question that he’s been kind of up and down. He’s put up some clunkers in games where he’s only gotten single digit carriers. And he was running for 3.1 last Sunday.

I do think that, as of right now, Pierre is the best tailback on the roster. I do think that he ought to get “more of a shot” and now that Dulymus is gone for the year, hopefully he will. I’ve seen just about enough of Mike Bell, thank you very much.

I just haven’t seen enough YET to convince me that the Saints could run the ball consistently and achieve the “balance” everybody’s craving so much with Pierre. That’s not to say that they couldn’t. I’m just saying they haven’t given it enough of a chance for me to say definitively that they could.