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Credit: Jason Behnken - Associated Press
By Dan Levy - Staff Writer - Saintsreport.com
Through the first two weeks of the 2024 NFL season, the Saints were flying high. Sporting a revamped offense under Klint Kubiak—which had, until Sunday, managed to score on nearly every drive—and a complementary defense able to pin its ears back and take the fight to the enemy, the Black & Gold were looking unstoppable. The vibes were immaculate, and words that had once existed only as hopeful whispers among the Who Dat faithful were now being blasted bright and bold across the internet and declared proudly from the lips of the national media.
This feels like 2009.
This feels like a Super Bowl season.
Those vibes came crashing down yesterday. The mirage of the offensive juggernaut, shattered. The complementary play of the first two weeks, gone—only to be replaced by overly-scripted play-calling, one-on-one failures, sloppy run fits and situational tackling, and frustratingly poor game management.
The Saints’ thrilling launch to the season, stalling out in the stratosphere.
While the defense certainly struggled to slow the Eagles’ offense—particularly on third downs, where they were infuriatingly leaky—holding their opponent to just 15 points should be, by any measure, enough to win the game. They epitomized the bend but don’t break philosophy, allowing long, sustained drives before coming up big in the red zone—or, in many instances, benefiting from the Eagles’ own share of highly questionable game management decisions.
Unfortunately, this style of defense—a defense of attrition—is not sustainable when your offense fails to produce. Three-and-outs on offense followed by 10 and 12 and 15-play drives on defense is a recipe for fatigue and mental collapse. And as the game continued in this manner and the ebb-and-flow remained unchanged, it became abundantly clear that the Saints’ bendy defense would inevitably break.
So what happened to the offense? Was it simply exposed? As a farce? An illusion? A short-lived sleight of hand by an offensive coordinator who just days ago was the toast of the Big Easy?
Well… yes, and no.
Let’s start with what’s clear. The Saints have issues on the offensive line, and yesterday the clock on hiding their trench deficiencies (trenchficiencies?) ran out. The offense as a whole was far too predictable and tendency-laden—something the Eagles took full advantage of. For the first time in three weeks the Saints were forced off script, out of their base—and it wasn’t pretty. Matchup issues and assignment errors and consistent QB pressure from the start. Impotence on early downs. Stalls and sputters on late ones. It was abysmal to watch, and while the first three weeks of any season can be tricky—when it feels like there’s somehow too much film on you and too little on your opponent—the coaches must do a better job of self-scouting.
Losing center Erik McCoy to injury on the first drive was a huge blow. But still the most overlooked vulnerability on this team is how reliant it is on Taysom Hill. On the surface this might sound absurd—an NFL offense being so heavily dependent on a 34-year-old utility player—but the truth is Hill is perhaps the greatest tendency breaker in NFL history. For this reason—and to Kubiak’s credit—his snap count has increased dramatically compared to previous seasons. Kubiak’s system favors heavier personnel, particularly on early downs. But with Hill on the field, it is impossible for opposing defenses to clearly identify the Saints’ personnel and match up accordingly.
When you have a player who is simultaneously a RB, a FB, a TE, and a QB, and he performs each of these roles—blocking and catching and throwing and carrying the ball—with starter-level efficacy, how exactly is a defense supposed to match up? Is it 21 personnel (2 RBs and 1 TE)? Is it 12 (1 RB and 2 TEs)? Maybe 11 (1 RB and 1 TE—a 3 WR set)?
Or is he just going to take the snap from center, and now you got to play 11-man run defense and matchup man-to-man across the board—so, f*** it. The universe is a sea of indifference and nothing really matters.
Hill is Schrodinger’s player: simultaneously all and none of these positions. And with him sidelined due to injury, the Saints offense was unmasked. A fullback was a fullback. A tight end was a tight end. And Alvin Kamara taking a direct snap on 4th and 1 just didn’t have the same "buckle up and clench your cheeks" aura as Taysom Hill.
So where do we go from here? Is the season over and doomed and done for… and—Dammit! What am I supposed to do with these season tickets and this Spencer Rattler jersey!?
The answer here is simple: this is the NFL. We are three games into a seventeen-game season, and it’s better that the Saints’ issues are dragged into the light now rather than in December or January. And while football is, indeed, a game of X’s and O’s, it is also—and, perhaps, more importantly—a game of questions and answers.
Some questions have already been posed. Brutally. At the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles. Their offensive line that road-graded our defense. Their defense front—including former Saints linebacker, Zach Baun, who, yesterday notwithstanding, I wouldn’t describe as anything but mid—living in the New Orleans backfield.
I will also take the liberty to pose a few questions of my own. For example: while I understand the commitment to an offensive identity, at what point during a double-digit-yardage-output half does said commitment become stubbornness? Would it hurt to use more 11 personnel on early downs rather than waiting until 3rd and long? And when you do go 11, would it be prudent to, from time to time, get out of the compressed WR sets and spread the defense (as we finally saw on the fourth-quarter drive immediately following Barkley’s long touchdown)?
And another thing. While I, for one, love the play-action yankee concept on first down to start the second drive of a game—which has resulted in long, beautiful (and dare I say, majestic) Rashid Shaheed touchdowns vs. both the Panthers and Cowboys—I, along with my Czech neighbors, my dog, and probably the entire Superdome, saw this one coming.
As did the Eagles. The result was a Derek Carr sack. So perhaps a little less predictability should be on the docket?
I’m not saying to get away from that particular situational look. Just maybe counter it from time to time with a screen pass. An end around. Something to break that obvious tendency and get the offense back on schedule.
To be clear: what I’m doing right now—this essay, this article. This smug didactic I’m putting out into the universe.
I hate it.
As a coach, anyway. I absolutely loathe this sort of Monday-morning quarterbacking. These long, overly indulgent, grievance-peddling hot takes, spittled out by some random guy who spent the evening sitting on his couch, licking buffalo sauce off his fingers. Questioning the Saints just because they lost one damn game.
But as a fan... this is what I’m looking for.
Answers.
As for the Saints’ coaches—DA and KK and everyone sitting in a quiet room at Airline Drive lit by the flickering light of a projector. Sipping lukewarm coffee. Operating on an hour or two of restless sleep. Watching yesterday’s film—the all-22 and the tight shot and everything in-between—wondering where the hell to go from here…
They’re looking for the same thing.
So let’s give them a chance to figure it out.
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