We all know that a football team is a machine with a number of moving parts that need to work together in order to achieve the desired result.  Just like a car full of gas won’t get you very far without a battery, the Saints found out on Thursday night that the best offense won’t get you very far if your defense decides to take a night off.  In this weekly piece, we will grade the Saints performance unit by unit as we decipher the wins and losses.

Pass Offense: A

Lost in the discussion about the short yardage troubles and the dismal defensive showing is the fact that Drew Brees was absolutely lights out in this game.  Brees began 2011 by posting 419 yards, 3 TD, and a 112.5 passer rating.  Brees kept the Saints in this game singlehandedly, and the Saints last drive (minus the final play) reminded us what Brees can do.

Brees hit six different receivers throughout the night.  Jimmy Graham looked like the matchup-killer we expected him to be, Marques Colston was his usual reliable self, and Robert Meachem showed those first-round draft pick skills while catching a 31 yard TD behind his head while running full speed.  The Saints looked just as explosive on routes out of the backfield as ever–the only difference being it was number 43 torching linebackers instead of number 25.  And all of those positives come before even mentioning Devery Henderson’s game-high 100 yards and TD.

Run Offense: C-

The run offense wasn’t a huge factor in the Saints losing in terms of yardage, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that a couple of crucial plays weren’t made by the Saints run offense when they needed to be.  Brees made the Saints run game essentially unimportant in terms of moving the ball, but that won’t happen every week, and the Saints need to be prepared to win games on the ground or at least give the offense some balance in a situation where Brees looks human.  Picking up 81 yards is not enough to keep a defense off balance, and it was obvious that the Saints offensive line, which supposedly features the best guard tandem in the league, was getting manhandled in the trenches on running downs.

The bigger issue, of course, is the short yardage debacle that ultimately resulted in the Saints losing the game.  The Saints asked a lot of Mark Ingram in his first professional game, but the O-line gave up so much ground that Ingram didn’t have room to work on any of the three plays in question.  Say what you will about the play call, the fact is that the Saints had two consecutive tries to pick up a yard inside the 10 on one series, and another try to score a TD from the half yard-line to possibly send the game into overtime, and the run offense went zero-for-three.  Championship teams have to have a higher percentage than that.

Pass Defense: D

Well, to put it lightly, Drew Brees wasn’t the only quarterback in this game who was lights out.  Aaron Rodgers came out firing, and really had the Packers on top from start to finish.  He tied the opening game record with three first-quarter TDs en route to his 312 yard performance, and Greg Jennings made former first-round pick Patrick Robinson look like a contestant on Pros vs. Joes.

The Packers worked the matchups so well that at one point LB Scott Shanle found himself split out wide covering one of the Packers five (nope, not joking) tight ends who made the opening day roster.  I would describe the play, but to say that it was the one where the Packers receiver had about a 10-yard cushion when he caught the ball wouldn’t really narrow it down.

Run Defense: C+

In terms of yardage, the Saints didn’t get gashed in the run game like they did against Rodgers in the passing game.  They did allow two TDs on the ground, however, and there is no room for that in a game where you are already getting beaten so badly through the air.  There is a saying that you should make a good passing team beat you on the ground or vice versa, but when you let a good passing team beat you on the ground after they already score three touchdowns through the air, you’re in trouble.

We discussed in our defensive preview that the Saints added all kinds of bulk on the interior defensive line, but you may not have noticed it in a game where the Saints allowed only nine fewer yards (103) than their 2010 average (112.3).

Special Teams: B-

This was a tough one to decipher because we saw the greatest highs and the lowest lows of the game on special teams.  With the entire Saints fan base begging for the defense to finally stop Aaron Rodgers’ ambush in the first half, we finally got our wish and were rewarded when Darren Sproles erased all memory of number 25 with an electric 72-yard punt return TD.  All of the sudden it was a game again, and the momentum had swung toward the good guys.

Then, this happened.  Randall Cobb’s one-upping of Darren Sproles knocked the newly-found wind out of the Saints’ sails, and once again it was on Brees to throw the Saints back into the game.  The reason I leaned toward B instead of C is that I think this was more of Cobb being spectacular than the Saints being bad, but it still isn’t great to see a guy who is basically tackled around the 20 spring back up and run the length of the field untouched from that point on, particularly in that game situation.

Coaching: B-

Look, say what you will about those calls in short yardage situations, but whoever calls out Sean Payton’s playcalling better have a good bit of evidence as to why whatever he did was a bad idea.  The guy is widely known as one of, if not the best, playcallers in the NFL, and his decisions in these situations come out right far more often than wrong.

The reaction to Payton’s playcalls is more of a reaction to their failure than to the calls themselves.  If Ingram had pounded that ball into the end zone at the end of the regulation, we wouldn’t be hearing any second-guessing.  Would I have done it differently? Maybe, but maybe that’s why I’m not a Super Bowl winning head coach in the National Football League.

That being said, the reason I give a B- here is because of some of the decisions on defense.  For the first time, I saw what looked like Gregg Williams being nervous to bring the house against an opposing QB.  Sure, he brought extra pressure, but the Saints spent a lot of time in their nickel defense, which seemed to give Aaron Rodgers more time than necessary to find his man (ten different ones throughout the night, to be exact).  It may have been the Packers playing matchups, but I saw a lot of Patrick Robinson vs. Greg Jennings, which I perceive as the Saints third cornerback against the Packers (and maybe the entire NFC’s) best wide receiver.

Bottom Line

Many of these grades are low, but that is in large part a result of the expectations being so high.  I don’t see any ominous signs in this loss pointing toward difficulties ahead.  The Saints played what looked like the best offense in the NFL and were in the game until the final play.  Once Gregg Williams has a chance to look over this tape and see what went wrong, I expect big improvements on defense, and as Mark Ingram progresses into an NFL player, I expect the short yardage situations to come out as wins for the Saints rather than losses.  Week 1 didn’t go the way the Saints hoped, but if Drew Brees has anything to say about it, the team has a lot to look forward to in 2011.