Saints End Season With Sim

by nathan.lejeune | 9 years ago | 0 Comments

Saints End Season With Sim 
Saints last game, verses Seahawks, ends in a sim - Saints turn focus to offseason

The Saints season will come to a very anti-climatic end, with a sim game against the Seahawks for Week 17. This will bring to end a season full of disappointment. After coming off a 9-7 season which found them in the playoffs, the Saints not only struggled at the end of last season, but carried those struggles on into this season. Injuries, inconsistent play, and bad coaching lead to a 1-6 start and four 4 of the Saints top playmakers on offense, injured or on the IR.

Zach Mettenberger had one of his roughest seasons to date, passing for a little over 2,000 yards and 19 INTs. His 59% was below 50% at one point in the season. Though he was playing better before the injury, Mettenberger still struggled overall from start to finish. Too many turnovers and not enough big plays.

Michael Smith also struggled this year. The 1500 yard back from the year before, battled injuries all year long and will finish with under 600 yards. He did have 7 TDs and really played better after coming back from injury.

Jeff Demps, the Saints primary back up HB and change of pace back, also struggled with injury. After getting some starts, the young HB never got going. He will finish the season with under 300 total yards and only 1 TD, and only 1 receiving TD and under 200 receiving yards.

Kerwynn Williams was a late season pick up and surprise. The young HB earned his way on to the team long term, if a contract can be worked out. The Saints brass has even decided to move on from Mark Ingram because of Williams play, which included 130+ yard game and averaged 4.8 yards per carry.

Travadis Morrison also was placed on IR this season. Before IR he was playing very strong, but did have his first game of his career where he had no catches. He will finish the season with 60 catches, 1015 yards and 10 TDs. He is a big play receiver and a great blocker on the outside. Morrison is the central piece for the Saints to build around.

Luke Wilson, Brice Butler and other players did step up towards the end of the season. The one surprise was the play of Nelson, who made some great plays in practice and the Saints are excited to see what he can do in a full time slot position.

On defense the Saints played terrible, until the season was over and the Saints coaching staff made some changes and allowed some rookies and young players to get playing time. The defense was lead by Stephone Anthony and Denzel Perryman in the middle. Both LBs played well and Perryman showed his versatility by moving all around the field. He did play better at MLB and really forms one of the youngest and best duo's that the GFML has.

Dezmen Southward finally found a great position to play, as he was moved back to his natural position of FS. There he began to make plays and recorded 2 INTs and 41 tackles. Rookie CB Brackett and 2nd year CB Capers, both high 1st round picks, began to make plays and the combo had 9 INTs and over 70 tackles on the season.

DE Jordan was moved to DT and the young rookies got starts at DE, which lead to a defense who was giving up the most rushing yards per game, to the low 20's by the end of the season. The defense was also a top 10 in passing yards allowed and really limited the big plays which were given up.

There are some pieces to resign and the Saints have the cap room to make some moves in the offseason. They look to be heavy hitters in the draft and look to build on what they have at the end of this season.