Chicago Bears vs. New Orleans Saints | 2023 NFL Week 9 Postgame remarks by head coach Dennis Allen and Saints players following the team’s victory against the Bears in Week 9.
“A valiant victory. In our league, none of them are ever simple, and if you ever believe you have one, you’re just waiting to get beaten. Thus, we had a successful victory. We’re happy that we won. As I prepare to play Minnesota, I’ll accept your questions going ahead.
“I thought the lessons learned were excellent. (That’s) Though I didn’t see much improvement defensively, the game changed because of the excellent takeaways. Our men deserve praise for going out and snatching the ball away. This week, we discussed punching the ball out, and we achieved a great top-down punch out. A few of the points we highlight were evidently positive. We still need to play defense from the outset. Therefore, we need to resolve it. We need to improve because we make far too many mistakes in the first part of the game.”
What the defense wasn’t performing up to par
Simply said, not positioning oneself correctly or getting aligned. Simply put, shoddy work.”
Regarding whether he thought
“No, I wanted to improve my game. We applied some pressure. I believed that Paulson was under pressure to intercept Tyler Bagent. While it’s natural to want to exert pressure, it becomes more difficult to do so when things are going second and fourth, third and three, or third and two. In those cases, there aren’t usually a lot of demands on your call sheet. You have to be a little bit more aggressive and you have to build some somewhat longer down (and) distances. All being said, we were able to score 24 points today, which is sufficient to win, thanks to five takeaways that placed us in a strong position.
Regarding the choice to accept the second quarter’s holding penalty
It was going to be a fourth-and-two, in my opinion, and to be very honest, I assumed they would be bold and go for it. I reasoned that we could support them and, with any luck, get him into a fourth and longer yardage scenario so they would have to attempt a field goal. It was unsuccessful. We were unable to finish it. However, that was the underlying idea.”
On the attack towards the conclusion of the first half
It wasn’t a very long time there, though. We attempted to move the ball down the field on a few plays, and on the final play of the half, we were clearly attempting to do so. I believe Derek Carr was under some pressure at that point, so we thought that he needed to get the ball out of his possession. As a result, we were unable to really advance the ball down the field. However, notice that there wasn’t much time to gather significant amounts of yards.”
