New Orleans Saints: Balance the key to winning?

Just a week after losing one of the NFL’s worst teams the New Orleans Saints manage to beat Tampa Bay 27-16.

This in my mind brings up a huge question, is offensive balance the key to winning for the New Orleans Saints?  Let’s take a look at some of the teams stats for the prior games.  Overall the Saints have 379 passing attempts to just 240 rushing attempts.

In the 3 games that the Saints have lost they have 138 passing attempts to just 61 rushing attempts. That is slightly over a 2 to 1 ration.

On the other side in the 6 games that the Saints have won they have 239 passing attempts to just 162 rushing attempts.

Arghhh the numbers you say…  How about I put it into a percentage perspective.

In the 3 games New Orleans has lost we have had a 70/30 pass/run percentage.  In the 6 games we have won it has been 60/40 pass/run percentage.

Not too much of a difference you say, well lets look at these stats a little deeper.

Looking at the Saints wins The two closes were Panthers and the Texans.

The passing attempts for both of these games exceeded were 44 for the Texans and 45 for the Panthers.  While rushing attempts were at 22 and 28.

Now looking at the saints two biggest wins the Bears and the Colts. The Balance is allot different and so is the score.

In the Bears Game the Saints had 37 passing attempts to 29 rushing attempts.  In the Colts game it was 35 passing attempts to 38 rushing attempts.

New Orleans wins seem to be by a larger margin if they run close to a balanced offensive scheme.

I understand that being down calls for more passing and that the defense really needs to step it up, but even in this last game against the Bucs the saints exercised a more balanced offense.

The saints have four capable backs, three who are averaging right at 4 yards per carry, and one who has a huge 7.1 ypc.

Everyone expects us to be a pass first run team later and they are setting up as such, so why not take some of the pressure off of Brees and let the running backs help.

The Saints have four very different running styles, and all four cannot be stopped at one time.

As a defense adjusts for one they open the way for another.  If we controlled the clock the defense might play better as well, not having as many plays on the field themselves and still being rested.

All I’m saying is that if anyone in the Saints front office takes the time to look at it, we have a fairly good backfield that if allowed can produce.

This would take some of the pressure off of Drew and quite possibly allow him to become even more efficient; 21 td’s to 11 interceptions might very well be three or four interceptions if we incorporated the running game more into the weekly gameplan.

The best coaches keep winning once teams adjust to them because they themselves are able to adjust.

Sean Payton  brought us our only Superbowl championship, but can he adjust his own offense to bring us another one?

I know he’s an offensive mastermind, so he has to see the similarities between winning and how he is running the ball.