New Orleans Saints defensive end Akiem Hicks was happy with the team's defensive performance against Carolina but he still feels the team can get better.
The Saints held the Panthers to a season low 231 yards in Thursday night's 28 10 victory that vaulted New Orleans into first place in the NFC South. But Carolina quarterback Cam Newton rushed for 43 yards and a touchdown.
There's 32 great quarterbacks out there and we faced one last week with Aaron Rodgers Hicks said. Cam Newtown is another great talent. It was something that we put in our mindset that we wanted to stop him from getting out the pocket so much and make so many plays with his feet.
He was able to get out there and do what he does. He makes plays with his feet and his arm. We were just doing our best to limit those options.
Hicks finished with four tackles and one of the team's four sacks at Carolina. The Saints also forced two turnovers Thursday night. They have seven in the past three games after having just two in the first five games of the season.
We had the takeaways that were real important in the game coach Sean Payton said. I think believe it or not last week against Green Bay even though all the yards were given up was significant with all the takeaways against a real good offense.
It was good to see the pressure and the sacks the things that really directly affect the turnovers.
The Saints allowed Newton to complete only 35.1 percent of his passes (10 of 28) the least accurate performance of his four year NFL career. His 10 completions and 39.4 quarterback rating were also career lows.
I feel like we definitely came out and we were firing on all cylinders Hicks said. I feel like as a defensive unit we held it together and we were able to come back after some not so favorable plays. I would say that this was a good pretty good performance by our defense and more so an overall team effort.
The Saints' defense will be tested again Nov. 9 against Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers at the Mercedes Benz Superdome.
Kaepernick has rushed for 260 yards this season with three games of 50 yards or more. However the Saints held Kaepernick to 25 yards rushing last season and 27 in 2012.
It's a fine line and you have to maintain your pocket pressure and not allow a quarterback that is really great with his feet to get out there Hicks said. A quarterback that plays with his feet they can get their mojo going if you let him get out the pocket and run around a little too much.
You want to limit that but you still have to play your style of defense and our style of defense is to pressure the quarterback.
Hicks said the team plans on healing during this mini bye week before getting back to work.
I feel like there's still another level that we can push ourselves to Hicks said. There were certain times (Newton) was able to break contain and get outside the pocket and make some plays downfield.
Being defensive minded you don't want to see that. You don't want your defense to give up anything. There's still another level to get to. We haven't reached a point we can be at yet.
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