Payton talks defense

Here's Saints coach Sean Payton's thoughts from Monday's press conference on a solid defensive effort in Kansas City:

Q: Can you talk about the execution of your goal line defense?
A: It certainly can provide momentum. When we talked earlier or later last week, the goal line situations that come up in football are kind of funny. You might go four or five weeks without being on the goal line offensively or defensively and then you might have in one game six or seven snaps. That’s typically what can happen. At the end of the year when we cut up all the film, normally you’re somewhere between 14 and 19 goal line snaps a year. Compared to maybe your two minute offense or defense, that’s not a lot. When you look at those snaps at the end of the year, it’s very common that all of a sudden four or five will come up in one game. I was pleased with our execution. I thought those were two important sequences for us to hold them to three points instead of six points.

Q: What has to happen in goal-line situations to be effective?
A: The common aspect of goal-line football is that initial snap and surge – be it from your front offensively or defensively – that initial surge as to ground gained or ground lost. I thought we played with good pad level and I thought we fit those runs pretty well and then of course when they threw it we were able to make a play. Initially it’s the font and the surge and when it’s crowded and condensed in tight formations, there’s going to be someone free defensively and it becomes a leverage game of where the best hole is and I thought we did a pretty good job of neutralizing their initial blocks and getting our tacklers onto the ball-carrier. When you can have two of those in one game it’s important and I think it was very important yesterday.

Q: Do you have to sell out defensively and focus more on the run than the pass?
A: You see a lot of teams throw early in goal-line situations because it becomes that much harder to get a yard or two yards. We’ve done that. It’s a little bit of a guessing game in regards to run or pass, but if you don’t defend the run… Deuce had a run yesterday where we got good movement and pretty good push and he was able to fall into the end zone pretty cleanly. I think it’s that initial surge. It becomes more problematic in loud environments where the cadence is more of an issue and then your advantage offensively where you don’t hear the snap count as well can be neutralized. Fortunately yesterday it wasn’t that loud and our guys did a good job.

Q: Does a game like yesterday’s give you more confidence in your defense?
A: I’m sure it does. We talked about yesterday being a complete game and we were only penalized two times and it came down to some important defensive stops, even at the end of the game really when they had the ball back down seven and we were able to come up with a key stop along with the red zone and goal-line sequences. It was a good team win and in those aspects of the game I thought we did a pretty good job. We contested some throws; it wasn’t perfect all the time and it’s an imperfect game but I thought Randall Gay did a good job of contesting some throws and Roman Harper played one of his better games. When we graded the tape out he did a real good job of supporting the run and that was encouraging as well.”