2019 Saints Secondary and Forward

[Raves]

So looking back recently with the dug up Eli Apple thread I figured we could look at what we could potentially have for our secondary next season.

CB-Marshon Lattimore (Contracted through 2020, RFA 2021)

CB-Eli Apple (Contracted through 2019, RFA 2020)

CB-Patrick Robinson (Contracted through 2021, potential out after 2019 with only a 2.5 mil cap hit, ~3.5 mil savings)

CB-Ken Crawley (RFA 2019)

FS-Marcus Williams (Contracted through 2020)

SS-Vonn Bell (Contracted through 2019)

SS-Kurt Coleman (Contracted through 2021.  Potential cuts: 2020 -3 mil cap hit, 4 mil savings     2021 - 1.5 mil hit, 4.55 mil savings)

 

Our secondary if healthy will be one of the best, but unfortunately most of them will be coming up on contracts sooner than later.  I think that keeping Lattimore, Apple, and Williams should be priorities to keep.  I would even say we should look to see if we can extend Apple now.  Get him locked up for about 5-6 mil/yr if we can before he has another phenomenal season with us and pricing himself out of our price range.  Although I think Robinson will play well for us next year, I think he'll end up being cut for the long term savings to help pay for the contracts to Lattimore, Apple, and Williams that will be needed.  What we decide to do with Bell and Crawley I think will come down to what they are looking for contract wise.  I could see Coleman potentially getting cut as soon as this offseason depending on the contract demands of some of our players and we just run with Bell as SS and draft another safety.

[navysaintsfan]

I agree with all of this. I have been very happy with Latt and Apple. He is fitting in just as well as I had hoped.

[SWATcha]

Coleman needs to be on the express train to cut town. Great signing that was /facepalm

[Raves]

11 minutes ago, SWATcha said:

Coleman needs to be on the express train to cut town. Great signing that was /facepalm

I think the signing wasn't bad considering with Kenny V being let go we needed some more leadership in the backfield and Coleman was 1 season removed from a good/great year.  This year though Bell stepped up and has played 73% of the snaps so Coleman is now just an expensive lockerroom/leadership guy.

 

16 minutes ago, navysaintsfan said:

I agree with all of this. I have been very happy with Latt and Apple. He is fitting in just as well as I had hoped.

Yup, we called it.  Dude had the talent, just needed the situation.

[saintsfan]

58 minutes ago, Raves said:

I think the signing wasn't bad considering with Kenny V being let go we needed some more leadership in the backfield and Coleman was 1 season removed from a good/great year.  This year though Bell stepped up and has played 73% of the snaps so Coleman is now just an expensive lockerroom/leadership guy.

Yeah but have you seen Kenny in TEN? He's been a FORCE on that defense and we could have had him cheaper than Coleman. We draft safties pretty well but we always let them go

[Destructo Spin]

I don't think Coleman is bad at all. A lot of the stuff he does when he's in there, covering the deep half of the field, is stuff that's not going to show up on the stat sheet. I wish he would tackle better but at least he's not getting burned in the open field.

[Raves]

18 minutes ago, saintsfan said:

Yeah but have you seen Kenny in TEN? He's been a FORCE on that defense and we could have had him cheaper than Coleman. We draft safties pretty well but we always let them go

Was he a force for us though?  Also it was pretty apparent that there was a rift between Payton and Kenny and having that in the lockerroom leader wasn't going to fly.  Although I haven't watched the Titans and Kenny V, based on just pure stats, it looks like Vonn Bell is surpassing him which is who he would've competed with since Williams has different requirements from what Vaccaro would've been asked to do.

[Destructo Spin]

Bell is Vaccaro without the mental mistakes.

KV could cover and he could blitz and play the run, but he would take some of the dumbest penalties and blow coverages and it always seemed to be at the worst possible moment. I don't know if he's the same way with the Titans now but I wasn't that upset to see him go, knowing that Bell was on the verge of becoming a really good player - which he has.

 

[Raves]

Looking at it, we used 3 safeties a lot last year, I think that was partly because Kenny had some CB skills and could play in the slot on occasion, not to mention we had horrid depth at CB last year.

I think this year a big thing is we don't need to run 3 safeties which is part of why Coleman is seeing less playing time.  With either Lattimore/Crawley/Robinson to start the season and then Lattimore/Apple/Crawley after the Robinson injury, we can rely on corners to actually play corner.  This will be increased even more when Robinson gets back healthy next year as we'll have 4 corners worth of depth to rely on.

[Mid Iowa]

21 hours ago, saintsfan said:

Yeah but have you seen Kenny in TEN? He's been a FORCE on that defense and we could have had him cheaper than Coleman. We draft safties pretty well but we always let them go

My test with Kenny V is -> this post is the first thing typed about him since the week we let him go. That says enough.

[Mid Iowa]

I'm anxious to get all of our depth back. The other guys on the team are stepping it up, too. Banjo is playing well, PJ Williams has pulled it around. The whole secondary is just so much better.

I'm a bit worried about Apple's health. Fortunately he's a durable guy, but he didn't get a bye week this season, so he'll likely play 17 regular season games, and hopefully 3 post season games.

Another reason the 1st round bye is imperative, and hopefully we can rest him in week 17 too, with a win over Atlanta in week 16.

[Dome]

On 12/19/2018 at 7:31 AM, Mid Iowa said:

My test with Kenny V is -> this post is the first thing typed about him since the week we let him go. That says enough.

Maybe that’s the first thing said in this forum, but he’s been wrecking shop with Tennessee. 

Just because we (speaking generally here) haven’t heard much doesn’t mean it’s not true, I was talking to Titans fans about him WEEKS ago and it was the same story. He’s been great for them. 

[nolaexpat]

9 hours ago, Dome said:

Kenny V ..... He’s been great for them. 

That might be so. But he might have been mediocre for us forever. Sometimes people/players are just like that. The environments in which they can thrive differ. Eli Apple is an example, though I don’t know if he’s a really good one. He was awful in NY and has been good to above average with us. 

So we let Kenny go. He was ok for us but never great. Maybe he could have been that guy but he did not always show it here. A change of scenery has done him some good and that’s great for him. 

[Dome]

11 hours ago, nolaexpat said:

That might be so. But he might have been mediocre for us forever. Sometimes people/players are just like that. The environments in which they can thrive differ. Eli Apple is an example, though I don’t know if he’s a really good one. He was awful in NY and has been good to above average with us. 

So we let Kenny go. He was ok for us but never great. Maybe he could have been that guy but he did not always show it here. A change of scenery has done him some good and that’s great for him. 

That’s all fair. Wasn’t the point I was making though. I was making a point against this statement by Mid.

 

On 12/19/2018 at 7:31 AM, Mid Iowa said:

My test with Kenny V is -> this post is the first thing typed about him since the week we let him go. That says enough.

IMO, it’s a flimsy statement and was unnecessarily dismissive given Kenny’s play this year. It’s not like we let him walk and he disappeared. He’s doing anything and everything Coleman does, but for TEN, and he would’ve been a lot cheaper too.

I’m not saying he’d be playing that well here, but obviously he’s capable of playing at a high level and the fact our coaching staff couldn’t get that out of him consistently is worth bringing up.

And IMO Coleman is still overpaid, even if he isn’t playing quite as horrible as he was to start the year. He’s played less than 25% of the snaps over the last 3 weeks, the only time he was playing a lot was after PRob went down and before Eli took a starting job 

[Mid Iowa]

11 hours ago, Dome said:

IMO, it’s a flimsy statement and was unnecessarily dismissive given Kenny’s play this year. It’s not like we let him walk and he disappeared. He’s doing anything and everything Coleman does, but for TEN, and he would’ve been a lot cheaper too.

I’m not saying he’d be playing that well here, but obviously he’s capable of playing at a high level and the fact our coaching staff couldn’t get that out of him consistently is worth bringing up.

And IMO Coleman is still overpaid, even if he isn’t playing quite as horrible as he was to start the year. He’s played less than 25% of the snaps over the last 3 weeks, the only time he was playing a lot was after PRob went down and before Eli took a starting job 

Flimsy...okay.
How about this, if the guy can't perform for us, I'm glad he's gone, period. Better?

I'm not sure what you're after, here. You'll win the argument, no doubt. And that argument is that you want an cheaper bad player rather than a higher dollar bad player, apparently.

We've already gone rounds about most of us saying we need better secondary coaching. We've been saying it for years now. We've also been saying Kenny V is a hit or miss player.

So what's your point?