The Recap- Saints Vs Bears

What a ridiculous game, the Saints were outgained on offense, had 2 fewer first downs than the Bears and yet somehow (mainly due to turning the Bears over 5 times) came away with a 24-17 win, a game that equally feels like it could have been a loss or a much more convincing win.

Let's break down how the madness went down.

Team Stats 

(Saints/Bears)

Final Score: 24-17

First downs: 18-20

3rd down efficiency: 7/14- 6/12

Total yards: 301-368

RedZone Efficiency:3 of 5- 2 of 4

Penalties: 1 for 5 yards- 8 for 71 yards

Turnovers- 0- 5

Time of possession- 29:20-30:40

Takeaways 

Offense

A strange game for the offense, only 1 penalty, Carr was not sacked and barely even touched, Carr was good in the redzone ( 2 TD passes inside the 10) and on third down and yet there was still a lot of meat left on the bone and its hard to see why. 

The main two things that I can put it down to is the run blocking outside of Taysom Hill's plays is still really bad outside of Hill's rushes the RBs averaged 2.4 YPC on 13 carries. That's not how this offense wants to operate and is a big reason for the lack of sustained drives. 

The second reason? The severe lack of Mike Thomas, Thomas is a drive starter/ sustainer he was targeted only twice with 0 receptions (he did draw a defensive hold on his first target but that first target didn't come until the 9:46 in the 4th quarter you have to imagine the Bears game-planned heavily to keep Thomas out of the game today. 

Dennis Allen also did his offense no favours today with some questionable calls, first, he decided to punt on the Bear's 39 on 4th and 5, the game was tied at 17 with 01:12 left in the 3rd this felt gutless at the time and I still think that's the case now even with hindsight. His second questionable call came with 07:52 left in the 4th, he decided to go for it with a 4th and 1 QB sneak (I thought Olave had the first down on the play before honestly)  which was unsuccessful instead of going for a field goal on the Bears 17 which would (if successful) have made it a 10 point game. 

Speaking of field goal attempts Grupe missed an opportunity to put more points on the board when he missed a 47-yard kick to again make it a 10-point game with 02:30 left in the game. Grupe has the makings to be a really good NFL kicker he nailed a 55-yarder earlier in the game and is 3-5 on the season from 50+ but the misses between 40-50 cant keep happening if he's going to continue to be the kicker for this team.

Final offensive thoughts:

• Much better pass protection from the o-line granted the Bear pass rush is not good but still encouraging to see.

• Taysom Hill continues to be one of the most consistently great offensive players in the NFL and the Nerds are awfully quiet after how good he's been this year.

• Loved to see the Saints break some tendencies by having Saunders run a route out of the ‘Bink Easy’ package, great read by Taysom too when he realised that Saunders was double covered and found Juwan Johnson wide open in the back of the endzone (also great pass pro by Jamaal Williams to give Hill the time to make throw)

• Shoutout to Olave for finding the endzone, thought he was better overall but still had a bad drop on third down. 

Defense

Let's start with the good, they held the Bears to only 17 points (Zero in the second half) and forced 5 turnovers, yes, you read that 5! With 3 interceptions and 2 forced fumbles. Paulson Adebo accounted for 3 of them with 2 steller interceptions and a textbook punch-out forced fumbler, Adebo has been not just the Saints CB the last 2 weeks but he’s been their best defensive player and I have to eat some serious crow on my off-season disgust about him starting over Alontae Taylor. 

Now for the bad, another slow start, Bagent had far too much time for three quarters which is a worrying trend we’ve seen now for the last few weeks. They did come to life in the 4th quarter but we need to see this much more throughout the game, especially against a very poor Bears o-line.

Bagent carved the Saints up at will in the first half and again we saw a QB not known for this athleticism scramble all over the defense at will especially on third down, the thought of this defense against the very mobile Josh Dobbs next week is already giving me nightmares. 

The run defense was again spotty, there weren’t the explosive runs we saw a week ago against the Colts (barring a 22-yarder) but it felt like the Bears could get 4.5.6 yards at will when they wanted it, they again stiffened in the second half but this can't keep happening early in games because at some point it's going to cost them too much where a second-half improvement cant save them.

Overall the defense did enough again but relying on 5 turnovers isn't a consistent formula for success going forward, we need to see the front 7 produce far more regularly if this defense is going to be a top 8 unit like we think they should be.

Saints Stock Exchange (Sponsored By… Nobody)

Just a quick hit section each week to highlight which Saints players/staff have their stock value increasing and decreasing after each game, 3 up and 3 down:

Stock Up

• Paulson Adebo
• Taysom Hill
• Demario Davis

When you finish with a stat line of 7 tackles, 2 interceptions, 7 tackles, a FF and a FR there's no way you can't be in the ‘up’ part of this article, frankly it was blasphemy that I didn't put Adebo in here last week, I'm right that wrong this week,

A place in this section should almost be reserved for Hill, he was the Saints running game this week and continues to be one of the most constantly effective offensive players in the NFL. He ended with 1 pass (a 3-yard TD), 11 carries for 52 yards and  4 receptions for 13 yards and 1 touchdown. This stretches the Saints record to 18-1 when Hill has more than 7 carries ( shoutout to Mike Triplett) and he’s the first player to have 10+ rushing, receiving and passing touchdowns in his career since Frank Gifford whose last season in the NFL was in 1964. If Hill isn't a Saints Hall of Famer when it's all said and done we riot.

My final place in the ‘ups’ was tricky, I went with Demario, he ended with 10 tackles (8 solo) a TFL and a game-clinching strip-sack, what he is still doing on a consistent basis at the age of 34 is wild.

Stock Down

• Marcus Maye
• Blake Grupe
• Dennis Allen

It feels harsh to have Maye in here after an absolutely fantastic INT but up to that point Maye had really struggled, he struggled to tackle in the open field and had a very strange play on 4th down early in the game where he was in a perfect position to stop him in the open field when he bit hard on a pump fake to allow the QB to convert. 

Grupe had appeared here far too often, It is simple he can't keep missing these important kicks especially when they are under 50 yards the rookie kicker is very much under the microscope.

The final spot here goes to Dennis Allen, earlier in the week he told the media the defenses slow starts were on him, therefore I'm putting the defenses early struggles today on him, he’s one of the league's best defensive minds, so he needs to prove it to get this fixed it already cost them against the Jags and it easily could have cost them the last 2 weeks. I am also throwing him in here for his questionable decisions that I mentioned earlier.

Conclusion 

2 straight wins for the Saints which I must admit feels good but it was far from perfect against a frankly a poor Bears team. I’ve accepted this team is probably going to be far from perfect from here on out, I just want to see some fun football which I definitely saw today.

The offense is slowly turning it around, if the defense can limit these slow starts they will win plenty of games before the year is up but beyond that who knows what this team will be. All I know is if they can get into the bye week 6-4 that will be huge for this team's chances to host a playoff game in January and I'll be here to break it all done, WHODAT.

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