El Caliente":upykqrhq said:
I have no beef with the Rams, their fans, or anyone who thinks that they should be the NFC favorite to the Super Bowl, but it’s a bit disingenuous to say that “the Rams will be able to beat the Saints when Aquib comes back.” That’s speaking as if the Saints won’t gameplan for him, and that’s also forgetting that the Saints have been without one of the top rated pass rushers in the 2018 draft. Marcus Davenport is one of PFFs top rated pass rushers, and last night against the Falcons he helped the defense hold the Falcons to 17 points (when they normally avg. 25.5 ppg).
I’m not saying that on a neutral field the Saints will beat the Rams, but I think that the Saints are more than capable on defense of not allowing the Rams to make the comeback that was allowed a few weeks ago.
The Falcons turned the ball over in the red zone like 4 times last night. The Saints are lucky they only gave up 17 points because it easily could have been 30+.
With that said, I think the Saints have a better team than the Rams. They have a significantly better coach and QB, and a slightly better defense. They'll be fine even if Talib comes back.
The problem for both the Saints and Rams is that every team except maybe the Bears and Cowboys that has a shot of making the playoffs has a QB capable of outscoring them in a shootout. We saw it in the playoffs in 2010 against the Saints. The Saints came into the game with the #3 passing offense and a pretty good defense. Seattle had the #19 pass offense and a bad defense. Seattle ended up winning 41-36. While most people remember that as the "beast quake" game the Saints actually did a pretty good job against Marshawn outside of that 1 run. The reason they won was largely due to Matt Hasselbeck outdueling Drew Brees on the day.
That's one of the things people don't understand about the "defense wins championships" motto. It's not that you need a great defense to win a championship. It's just that a bad defense can lose you a championship even if you have an incredible offense.