Colts-Saints observations

Honestly, I thought the Saints were going to keep it close. Worst-case, the Colts would get up by double digits, but the Saints would rally late to prevent the Colts from covering. But, it wasn't even close.

I haven't posted 1-3 of the NFC (or any of the AFC, but that's another story), but when I do you'll see that I have New Orleans ranked at the top. Huh. I'm not going to change that now (because those are meant as preseason rankings), but that will definitely change when I next update them. The Saints defense, specifically the secondary, looked bad. Yeah, it was against the Colts, who can make anybody look bad, but that's not the kind of showing an NFC favorite puts up.

Here's how the night went: The Saints were keeping their safeties deep to guard against the deep threat. The Colts responded by running Joseph Addai, which the Saints couldn't stop, and as soon as the Saints started to cheat against the run, Manning burned them deep. End of story. The Saints had no answer for the Colts' attack.

Saints Specific: The obvious conclusion was that the Saints defense was bad. However, that was somewhat expected. That's not to say they don't have big problems to fix, but at least those problems were expected. What wasn't expected was how ineffective the offense was. What happened to the nearly-perfect Drew Brees from the preseason? Did Joe Horn elevate the Saints receiver corps so much that Colston and Henderson look average without him? Maybe it was just first game rust. Whatever the case, the Saints need to show up in week 2.

Colts Specific: Man, the Colts look good. Their defense was like a swarm of bees - every play ended with at least four blue jerseys assisting the tackle. I didn't see that from the Colts last year, even when their defense stepped up in the playoffs. I just took a quick look at the Colts roster. Only one player on defense is over 29, and the majority are in the 22-26 range. That's a young defense that is fast and that swarms. They looked soft on the Saints first drive (which resulted in a missed field goal), but after that they buckled down and didn't give up anything. Pair that defense with the Colts offense, which looked as good as always, and you have a superbowl contender.