Rouxble said

I'll add a few more Saints facts, follow up with a look at the Bagent-led Bears.

PERSONNEL MATTERS

A lot has been made of player A or B being a tell, and it had me thinking... what about complete personnel packages? We've already looked some at personnel groupings (11, 12, 6OL+, etc.), but what about the different combinations of players on the field?

The first thing I looked at was how many different groupings of players the Saints have used on offense this season. The number was almost unbelievable. We have used 198 unique personnel packages through eight games. Injuries, suspensions, and other circumstances have contributed, but I wouldn't have assumed we used that many. Our most common package was used 77 times (14% of all plays): Hill, Kamara, Thomas, Olave, Shaheed. Only seven packages have been used at least 10 times, and all of those packages feature our top three WR's.

With so many different packages, it would be hard for defenses to key on any without overwhelming the players. However, if you remember, I said all of our top packages feature Thomas, Olave, and Shaheed. Do we have a tendency with those three guys out there?

The answer is yes--we pass 83% of the time when they are on the field together. When we have 3+ WR on the field and one of them isn't the big three, we pass only 45% of the time. Pretty balanced by comparison.

Despite the giveaway with our big three, we still average 5.8 yds/DB when they are all on the field at the same time versus 6.2 yds/DB when at least one is missing. Where we actually gain a slight edge is in the run game, probably due to surprise. We average 4.1 yds/rush when the big three is out there, and 3.6 yds/rush when they are not.

Still not as good as the Bowden edge, where we get 4.3 yds/rush when he is on the field.

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ON TO THE BEARS

Sorry for the block of words there, I'll try to keep this one short and to the point.



The offensive stats are for the last three games, defensive stats are for the season. The Bears definitely lean on the run to help their young QB, and they've done it well. They've averaged 4.2 yds/att and have scored five rushing TD's in the last three games. Even with all that rushing success, they don't test the defense vertically too often, but when they do it's on early downs.

Here are their down/distance tendencies for the last three games:



They have played really well on 1st down, driven by a 69% success rate when passing. They also play very well whenever they have that successful first down and really poorly otherwise, so step one is to figure out how to stop their early down passing game.

One thing to consider is that Bagent has thrown 32 passes on first down, and 12 have been behind the LOS. The key is stopping YAC on those plays, because the Bears have averaged 9.9 YAC/completion on those throws, with a 67% success rate per attempt. We need our guys to make tackles and force those 2nd/3rd and long situations.

Otherwise, we just need to play good pass defense, with Bagent targeting his WR's and TE's on the other 19/20 attempts. On those passes, he is 17/19 for 198 yards and an interception.

That's it for this week, thanks to all for reading. Looking forward to another Saints win this Sunday. WHO DAT!

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