After what hopefully felt like a long week following a dismal performance against Tampa Bay last weekend, the Saints defense gets a chance to redeem itself in primetime on Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts.\u00a0 As it stands, the circumstances couldn’t really be better, as the unit should be able to blow off some steam against an offense that hasn’t looked quite right all year.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, these aren’t your typical Colts.\u00a0 Without Peyton Manning, the most surgical, timing-based passing attack in the NFL has been reduced to something entire less frightening.\u00a0 While that may cause some teams to take them lightly, you can bet Gregg Williams is taking this week seriously after the disaster in Tampa.<\/p>\n
There are still some legitimate pieces of this offense, and for the last few weeks it’s been all about the Curtis Painter-Pierre Garcon connection.\u00a0 In Painter’s three starts this season, he has hit Garcon for four TDs, and three of those have been for 87, 59, and 67 yards.\u00a0 The Colts haven’t done much this year, but they’ve made big plays, which doesn’t bode well for a Saints defense that has struggled with allowing big plays all season.<\/p>\n
As questionable as the Colts passing game has been, the running game has been equally suspect.\u00a0 Joseph Addai has been decent, averaging 4.4 yards per carry, but that isn’t enough to carry a team that can’t get it done through the air.\u00a0 Again, though, the Saints can’t take the unit likely, as the defense has had its fair share of trouble defending the run.\u00a0 Addai has been hurt, but he figures to get some action Sunday.<\/p>\n
Pierre Garcon vs. Malcolm Jenkins.\u00a0 Garcon has really been the only dangerous player on this team for the last few weeks, so the most crucial thing tonight is for Jenkins to make sure that he isn’t getting behind the corners.\u00a0 Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark are still around, but it seems like Painter and Garcon have developed a certain rapport, so it will be crucial for the secondary to eliminate the big play via Garcon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After what hopefully felt like a long week following a dismal performance against Tampa Bay last weekend, the Saints defense gets a chance to redeem itself in primetime on Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts.\u00a0 As it stands, the circumstances couldn’t really be better, as the unit should be able to blow off some steam against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}