Saints and Vikings

[BlakeJ]

If and probably when these teams meet up in the AFC championship game how do you think these teams matchup??

Watching a couple games now, there is a glaring problem with the Saints defense. Run defense. The Saints havent played a balanced team like Minnesota yet, so there are no good examples, but seems like they give up pretty good yardage per attempt. Adrian Peterson being as physical as he is I think would eat this defense up and eat the clock up at the same time. Kind of like what ATL and STL did to NO.

If you look at all the teams that gave NO the most problems.....

Miami 46-34 Ronnie Brown and Ricky Williams.
Atlanta 35-27 Michael Turner
St Louis 28-23 Steven Jackson

Those backs are big physical runners and wore the Saints defense down. The problem they ran into was they didnt have the passing game, passing defense, and more importantly pass rush to slow down the Saints offense and not become one dimensional. The one team to put a pass rush on Brees was Miami. They sacked 5-6 times I believe.

Keys to beating the Saints

1) Pass Rush
2) Physical run game to wear down the D.
3) Some sort of pass defense.
4) A QB who will keep the defense honest

1 through 4 equals Minnesota.

The other teams had some of those things, but none had all.

Your thoughts.

[Favpack]

Barring injury to the qb's - the two teams will meet in the NFC championship game. Nobody else comes close at all - not even remotely - and you factor in the two dome crowds - it's a lock.

Can Minn. go to NO and win? I'd say no at this point, but they do have a D that's 10x better than the Patsies.

[BlakeJ]

Barring injury to the qb's - the two teams will meet in the NFC championship game. Nobody else comes close at all - not even remotely - and you factor in the two dome crowds - it's a lock.

Can Minn. go to NO and win? I'd say no at this point, but they do have a D that's 10x better than the Patsies.

My bad...NFC. Not sure what I was thinking.

[CCDawgs]

Both teams can score. I think Minnesota would win due to the fact that their defense is lights out.

[Matthew 2000 Eagle]

To beat the Saints, you have to be patient on offense, and keep the Saints high powered offense on the sidelines. The Saints run defense is suspect, and it's been shown in games against Carolina, Atlanta, and Miami.

To defend the Saints, play your corners tight, play your safeties over the top, and don't give up the big play. The Saints live off of the big play! You can give up a few plays underneath, by playing a bend but don't break style defense. But, they hurt you the most when you let them beat you deep. By playing this type of defense, it can frustrate the big play offense because, you're taking away what they do best. Eventually, an offense like this will get frustrated, and they'll start to force passes into double coverage downfield. That's when turnovers happen!

In my opinion, Minnesota is the top squad in the NFC. They're about the most complete team that we've seen in quite awhile, from offense, to defense, to special teams. They've got it all! That's my pick to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl this year.

As for the AFC, for some reason, people are not taking notice of San Diego. They scare me more than the Saints, to be honest. I'm picking the Chargers to rep the AFC.