Before everyone starts screaming from the roof tops, “The rebuilt Saints defense has arrived!” let’s remember a few things.

AP Photo / Bill Haber

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) gets a pass away while being sacked by San Francisco 49ers Patrick Willis (52) in the first half of their NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008.

San Francisco 49ers quarterback JT O’Sullivan has been sacked 19 times in four games, and when I looked up journeyman quarterback on Wikipedia, there was a picture of him.

Still, give the Saints credit grinding a very sackable quarterback into the dirt.

What you saw yesterday is probably the best case scenario for the Saints defense in 2008. Lots of quarterback pressure, they give up a lot of yards, but create turnovers and get key stops.

The final tally yesterday was six sacks, three forced turnovers and 312 yards allowed.

The Saints held the 49ers out of the end zone until four minutes left in the game, and only allowed them to convert three third downs.

I’ve said it so many times I’m beginning to sound like a politician giving a stump speech, but the Saints defense is only as good as Will Smith and Charles Grant. Yesterday they combined for three sacks, nine tackles, and a forced fumble.

That feels more like their combined 130 million dollars in contracts.

The good news for the Saints defense is the journeyman quarterback parade continues next week with Gus Frerotte coming to town. The bad news is Adrian Peterson comes with him, and the Saints run defense hasn’t shown itself to be exactly stiff.

While everyone is rightfully excited over Deuce McAllister’s big debut, a word of caution.

Even Deuce isn’t quite sure how his knees will hold up. After the game he said he didn’t really take a good shot to them, so Deuce probably won’t be a 20-carry guy every week.

Maybe Sean Payton is thinking Deuce only has a limited number of carries left and wants to try and ration them out, and that’s why he’s been holding him back.

The answer if Deuce can last a whole season is anyone’s guess, but even limited he gives the Saints offense a toughness they desperately need.

In fact, I could argue with Drew Brees in control of the offense, toughness is the only ingredient the Saints offense is missing to be the NFL’s best.

Brees continues to amaze me. I thought the offense would struggle without Marques Colston, Jeremy Shockey and David Patten (he was out most of the game).

Brees just kept things rolling, and threw to Lance Moore and Robert Meachem on a day where Reggie Bush was the focus of the 49ers.

At least I had the score exactly right – just not in the Saints favor.

So after a month the Saints as a team are coming into focus. On offense they’ll score plenty and are incredibly fun to watch with big pass plays, lots of points, and are deadly on third down. On defense the Saints will depend on a pass rush and turnovers to win games. Definitely not the Dome Patrol but they don’t need to be.

If the Saints defense had held their first four opponents to less than 24 points, they’d be undefeated, so from here on out that’s how I’ll judge them. 24 points or less, and the defense did their job.

2-2 means the Saints are average, but on Sunday we saw they can be a lot better. The question now is can they do it consistently?

Ralph Malbrough is a Saints fan living in Houston. He can be reached at ralphmalbrough@hotmail.com . He also hosts an internet radio show at http://www.blogtalkradio/forecastradio. You can listen live or download archived editions at iTunes.