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Saints Need To Open Checkbook
To Young Stars
DE Smith, WR Colston more than deserving based
on past performance, youth and leadership position
posted June 9, 2008 - print
me!
neworleansprofootball.com
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DE Will Smith |
OTAs: The Saints are in the middle of voluntary
practice sessions - organized team activities - and are working
hard in what is really a full-scale training camp without pads.
Coaches are "installing" packages on both sides of the
ball and young plays and veterans alike are preparing for training
camp.
Ellis, Smith, Colston Missing OTAs: DE Will
Smith is present but continues to sit out of the voluntary workouts
as a signal to the Saints that he is waiting for his new contract.
Top draft pick DT Sedrick Ellis was also excused
for personal reasons.
WR Marques Colston was not excused from the voluntary
sessions per se, but head coach Sean Payton stressed that he had
yet to hear from Colston as to why. Smith and Colston are both
represented by Joel Segal.
While Ellis is awaiting the signing of his first
contract, Smith and Colston are awaiting their second.
Lehr Missing OTAs: Veteran OL Matt Lehr is
not participating in the voluntary practices due to personal reasons.
Lehr is involved in an investigation into a steroid
dealer's disclosures to league officials that Lehr and Titans
LB Ryan Fowler had bought steroids from David Jacobs, the convicted
steroids dealer. Both Lehr and Fowler were members of the Cowboys
at the time of their alleged involvment with Jacobs.
Lehr has already served a four-game suspension in
recent years as a member of the Falcons.
Jacobs was found dead in his home last Thursday,
along with a woman, in what has been ruled a suicide, despite
the fact that Jacobs had two gunshots wounds. Jacobs had a history
of domestic threats of violence.
Ugly Stats: Pro-football-stats.com, one of
the best football stats blogs, posted some ugly numbers for Saints
fans. According to a June 5 blog entry, the Saints' pass defense
in 2007 was historically bad.
"New Orleans allowed 1.48 more adjusted yards
per pass than the average team.
The Saints had a pretty easy schedule last year:
they faced Byron Leftwich, Alex Smith, David Carr, Marc Bulger,
Kyle Orton, Matt Moore, Vince Young, Chris Redman, Joey Harrington
and Luke McNown, all players that were below average in 2007.
So when you adjust New Orleans’ actual average yards per
attempt allowed number (1.48 below average) for their strength
of schedule (0.49 AY/A below average), we can give a value of
-1.98 for the Saints, meaning that’s what we’d have
expected New Orleans to allow if they faced an average slate of
quarterbacks.
As you can imagine, that’s really awful. The
Saints pass defense last year looks historically bad without recognizing
a below average schedule. Basically, the ‘07 Saints pass
D was about as bad as it gets."
On a similar performance-based metric that was adjusted
for strength of schedule, Saints QB Drew Brees was slightly above
average and ranked 14th overall. Tom Brady, David Garrard and
Peyton Manning were rated 1-2-3.
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