Not so much we lost, its how we lost to Philly (53 Viewers)

[jboss]

This one stings given how close it was, but I don't think it's a particularly bad one. We were out one of our most important offensive weapons in Taysom. Then McCoy goes down early causing shuffling of an already thin Oline against maybe the best defensive line in the league. The fact we were able to keep this competetive is a testament to this team.

Defense played great, minus the one obvious huge TD run by Saquon. The one big question mark after this one is what is the offense's true identity? Facing a defense like this clearly threw off what looked like one of the best offenses in the league. We weren't terrible on offense but just never seemed to get any steam going compared to the last couple weeks. It was a humbling one, but I think we bounce back from this.

 

[Saintcd]

McCoy is NOT just one guy , he's the rock of our OL. He calls all the protections. He most likely would have been blocking Carter who was the biggest disruptive force on their OL

But he was. The coaches obviously hadn’t even thought of the probability of a center or lineman to go down that the refused to do anything thru free agency. They left the oline with no depth at all. Philly didn’t skip a beat when they lost their 2 o linemen. OC did nothing after he went down except look at PCs old playbook and say let’s use this.

 

[ravenblade23x]

The one constant in the NFL is injuries...that's the point of being concerned about the OL. Eagles had to overcome there star WR and losing there Smith in the 4th quarter. Good teams need to adjust...the Saints had the entire game to figure out how change there attack and they failed. Putting this all on McCoy going out is cope in my opinion.

Everyone talking about how great the Eagles DL was, no one was saying that before the game. Everyone was saying how we would run all over them. Not worried that we lost because that happens but the way the offense stagnated was very concerning for me.

 

[DSnfla]

But he was. The coaches obviously hadn’t even thought of the probability of a center or lineman to go down that the refused to do anything thru free agency. They left the oline with no depth at all. Philly didn’t skip a beat when they lost their 2 o linemen. OC did nothing after he went down except look at PCs old playbook and say let’s use this.

Ridiculous, On every OL the C is THE guy. Mike Detillier did an article saying that when a team loses it's C they lose 70% of the time. Philly lost a LT and LG, not the same. Part of the issue is that with that kind of shake up in the OL it's cohesiveness that's lost. At least 3 times today O linemen were bumping into each other. In the reg season there is not enough practice time to get many reps with different lineups. If EM has to miss any time I look for the OL to play better with more reps, nowhere near as well as if EM was in there but better

 

[Belfast Saint]

Coming into the season there was two glaring holes to me.

1. How bad is the OL. KK was able to scheme around some of those issues the first two games but after McCoy's injury it just fell apart. You can't have an OL that is so fragile that one guy goes down. I am little worried that even when McCoy is back that the Eagles may have figured out how to defend the Saints. They took the run away and dared us to beat them in the air and we don't have the pass protection and to be honest the threats to do it.

2. No real third WR threat. We run so much 12 personal because we lack and true third down weapon. Once the Eagles stacked 5 on the line we never where able to change personal and force them to respect the pass.

3. So little was asked of Carr the first two games, I just feel like Carr's tenure so far has been, good-great QB when things are going are way, but V to bad when not.

This game just felt so much like last season, teams stuffing the run game, getting stuck in 3rd and long and being unable to convert.

I think the Saints will still win some games and likely still compete for the division but how we lost this game was very revealing and has me worried. I

I think a little bit of cheese was eaten by some...

This OL was playing very effectively in the 1st two games but looked at objectively, we have a rookie at LT, a project at RT, 2 middling guards and an all-pro calibre center. And in a new, albeit OL friendly offense. This group was always going to have some ups and downs because this isn't an established group of vets who have been playing to a high standard week in and week out. This isn't a top 3 or top 5 OL group, despite playing very well early. They can be effective as we've seen but to expect them to maul every team, every game no matter what is too much.

Take our one all-pro out of that group against a team geared up, correctly, to stop the run and we will struggle a bit.

And when the run game isn't particularly clicking (3.2 ypc), the passing game has to be very efficient. As you suggest, we're missing a third consistent receiving/ TE threat - but that isn't really news revealed by this game. However, putting that to the side, Shaheed 5 targets and 0 catches. That's not passing efficiency and if we connect on a couple of those, the game likely is different. I don't think the pressure was so high that we couldn't have performed better in the passing game but certainly there was more pressure than in the first two games. Because the game was close and we continued to run, we weren't in proper catch up mode. But running inefficiency meant we faced a lot more 3rd and long than we had previously. But still, 56% completion rate is sub-par, as is 5.7 ypa (which is a function of that).

With hindsight and with a patched up OL and no Taysom, we probably should have taken the FG instead of going for it on 4th and 1 but we are trying to be aggressive - sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it doesn't.

This was tight game and exactly the kind of game we needed to win, and that to me is the most unfortunate part of this.

 

[GilFinnerty]

I think a little bit of cheese was eaten by some...

This OL was playing very effectively in the 1st two games but looked at objectively, we have a rookie at LT, a project at RT, 2 middling guards and an all-pro calibre center. And in a new, albeit OL friendly offense. This group was always going to have some ups and downs because this isn't an established group of vets who have been playing to a high standard week in and week out. This isn't a top 3 or top 5 OL group, despite playing very well early. They can be effective as we've seen but to expect them to maul every team, every game no matter what is too much.

Take our one all-pro out of that group against a team geared up, correctly, to stop the run and we will struggle a bit.

And when the run game isn't particularly clicking (3.2 ypc), the passing game has to be very efficient. As you suggest, we're missing a third consistent receiving/ TE threat - but that isn't really news revealed by this game. However, putting that to the side, Shaheed 5 targets and 0 catches. That's not passing efficiency and if we connect on a couple of those, the game likely is different. I don't think the pressure was so high that we couldn't have performed better in the passing game but certainly there was more pressure than in the first two games. Because the game was close and we continued to run, we weren't in proper catch up mode. But running inefficiency meant we faced a lot more 3rd and long than we had previously. But still, 56% completion rate is sub-par, as is 5.7 ypa (which is a function of that).

With hindsight and with a patched up OL and no Taysom, we probably should have taken the FG instead of going for it on 4th and 1 but we are trying to be aggressive - sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it doesn't.

This was tight game and exactly the kind of game we needed to win, and that to me is the most unfortunate part of this.

I think there will be a better showing with a week of reps without Mccoy. Hell we had guys pulling and running into each other. Carr gets to the huddle and yells what he sees. Mccoy then makes line checks. The whole thing definitely got out of whack. Maybe im in the glass half full approach on it. But we should be better with a week to prepare with not having him

 

[Pkessling]

Coming into the season there was two glaring holes to me.

1. How bad is the OL. KK was able to scheme around some of those issues the first two games but after McCoy's injury it just fell apart. You can't have an OL that is so fragile that one guy goes down. I am little worried that even when McCoy is back that the Eagles may have figured out how to defend the Saints. They took the run away and dared us to beat them in the air and we don't have the pass protection and to be honest the threats to do it.

2. No real third WR threat. We run so much 12 personal because we lack and true third down weapon. Once the Eagles stacked 5 on the line we never where able to change personal and force them to respect the pass.

3. So little was asked of Carr the first two games, I just feel like Carr's tenure so far has been, good-great QB when things are going are way, but V to bad when not.

This game just felt so much like last season, teams stuffing the run game, getting stuck in 3rd and long and being unable to convert.

I think the Saints will still win some games and likely still compete for the division but how we lost this game was very revealing and has me worried. I

Agree. However, I expected the offense to adjust to what the Eagles were doing on defense but they never did. Against that 5 man front, they continually tried running AK between the tackles, they didn’t move the pocket, they didn’t run any screens, they didn’t take advantage of the fact that Baun was expected to cover AK man to man, they didn’t throw to the TEs.

 

[Pkessling]

This one stings given how close it was, but I don't think it's a particularly bad one. We were out one of our most important offensive weapons in Taysom. Then McCoy goes down early causing shuffling of an already thin Oline against maybe the best defensive line in the league. The fact we were able to keep this competetive is a testament to this team.

Defense played great, minus the one obvious huge TD run by Saquon. The one big question mark after this one is what is the offense's true identity? Facing a defense like this clearly threw off what looked like one of the best offenses in the league. We weren't terrible on offense but just never seemed to get any steam going compared to the last couple weeks. It was a humbling one, but I think we bounce back from this.

The defense gave up over 160 yards to a TE, including a game winning catch on 3rd and 16. The defense allowed Barkley to run for over 140 yards. Gave up 460 yards and allowed 15 points in the 4th quarter. Yes, the defense made big plays to keep the Saints in the game for 3 quarters. However, once again DA was incapable of calling a defensive alignment that could stop a team on 3rd and long to preserve a win. The offensive deserves much of the blame for this loss but they did give the Saints a lead with just over 2 mins left in the game. The OC and DC just didn’t get it done.