The Recap- Saints Vs Bucs

        The Saints played probably their best game of the season on Sunday, a case of too little to late? Maybe but at this stage with Dennis Allen’s job almost certainly safe its important to see improvements on what we’ve seen from this team for most of the season.

Team Stats

(Saints/Bucs)

Final Score: 23-13

First downs: 20-13

3rd down efficiency: 8/18- 2/8

Total yards: 310-349

Red Zone Efficiency:1 of 3 - 0 of 0

Penalties:  5 for 31 yards- 5 for 38 yards

Turnovers- 0-4

Time of possession- 36:38 - 23:22

Takeaways

Offense

        Derek Carr continued his late season improvements Carr has now posted a 105.5 passer rating on better in 4 of his last 5 games, he’s only managed to 3 such games in the 11 games prior. Again, Carr wasn’t anything otherworldly, but he was efficient, was very good on third down and crucially handled pressure better than he probably has all season.

        Carr was only under pressure on 7 dropbacks but unlike throughout the season he managed those dropbacks well, he completed 4 passes on 6 attempts (66.7%) for 47 yards and a Touchdown. On the season Carr has only completed 48% of his passes under pressure. So, a significant improvement in this game, but like most things with Carr and this offense we need to see this on a consistent basis for this offense to be what it needs to be.

        Finally, we saw Carr connect with his TEs in the way we expected before the season. TE’s accounted for 8 of Carr’s 25 completions and 122 of Carr’s 197 passing yards. They also caught both Touchdown passes that Carr threw. The TE group has been one of the biggest disappointments for the offense all year. Taysom Hill has been okay; Foster Moreau has been mainly a blocker after showing good promise as a receiver with Carr in Las Vegas. 

        Juwan Johnson has been the biggest disappointment of the group, I thought he was ascending into a Pro-Bowl caliber player this year I’ve been wrong but performances like Sunday (8 catches for 90 yards and a TD) is the types play of play I expected to see much more often. Again, as with everything on offense we need to see it consistently for it to mean much but it’s encouraging to see.

        The o-line has shown really solid improvement in pass protection throughout the season especially since Andrus Peat has taken over at LT. They only gave up 6 pressures against the Bucs per PFF, considering the Bucs blitzed on 51.5% of drop backs this is impressive, when earlier in the season if a team blitzed it almost guaranteed pressure.

        Despite the improvements we’ve seen in pass protection we have not seen the same in run blocking. The run game again, outside of Alvin Kamara again struggled against a good Bucs front 7. Kamara was running well before leaving the game with an Ankle sprain, DA would not specify on the severity of the injury when he spoke to the media today. Outside of Kamara Saints RBs and Taysom averaged 3 YPC on 22 carries. This is right up there for me as one the biggest issues that has to be fixed on offense this off-season. A new O-line coach could be something that the Saints need to consider. 

Defense

        This was an important comeback game for the Saints defense, Baker Mayfield and this Bucs offense torched them in the first meeting. That wasn’t the case on Sunday, yes if you look at the stats you may think that it wasn’t a particularly strong outing but there’s some important context.

        With 10:30 left in the 4th quarter the Saints were up 20-0, at this stage the Bucs had 150 yards of total offense. The Saints took their foot of the gas and the Bucs next three drives accounted for 199 yards and 2 TDs. Now, the Saints still gave these plays up but it’s reasonable to think that the plan that was in place earlier in the game wasn’t quite what was called at this point in the game.

        The Saints sacked Mayfield twice and forced 4 turnovers (well, forced 3 and were gifted 1) Johnathan Abram accounted for 2 of those turnovers with an interception on a tipped pass by Tanoh Kpassgnon and forced a fumble on a textbook strip on Bucs RB Rachaad White. Whilst Alontae Taylor snagged his first career INT when he high pointed an underthrown pass from Mayfield. 

        The final turnover was a play very reminiscent of a play involving Chris Olave against the Bucs last season. A completed deep ball, where the receiver in this case was Trey Palmer who caught it, went down untouched and fumbled, Isaac Yiadom recovered, this was actually a pretty crucial mistake as this would have set the Bucs up down with 1st and 10 from the Saints 21 with 03:48 to go, yes still down 16 so a comeback would have been unlikely but this allowed the Saints to get the ball back and drain a further 01:44 of the clock, almost assuring the victory.

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

• Johnathan Abram
• Alontae Taylor
• Juwan Johnson

        Abrams for most of the season has been a reserve/practice squad player, he was given the start at Safety for 2 reasons, rookie Jordan Howden missed practice in the build up due to illness and Abrams has put in the work behind the scenes all season to have earned the opportunity, DA commented that Abrams has logged the most time on the team issued iPads watching film. Taylor bounced back well after being benched against the Rams last week and earned his first career INT, that warrants a place on this list 9 times out of 10.

        Final place on the ‘Ups’ this week goes to Juwan Johnson; he was dominant in this game accounting for 90 of the teams 208 passing yards. Hope to see another strong game to close out the season.

Stock Down

• Cam Jordan
• Paulson Adebo

        Cam Jordan won’t find his name here often, clearly, he’s still hampered by the ankle injury as despite his sack numbers being very low, he was pressuring the QB still at a close to elite level. That’s not really been happening since the injury. On Sunday Cam didn’t register a single QB pressure or any defensive stops in the run game per PFF (Defensive Stops - tackles that constitute a "failure" for the offense).

        My final down for this game is Adebo a player who has featured heavily in the ‘Ups’ list throughout the year. He struggled a bit in this game, per PFF he gave up 3 catches for 115 yards and a touchdown on 8 targets. The 2 catches for 68 yards he gave up to Mike Evans, Adebo was not close in coverage. He was credited by PFF as giving up the 47-yard TD to Chris Godwin from watching the play back I am not sure how so that might not be fair.

Conclusion

        The Saints showed up when they had to this was lose and go home and they produced their most complete game of the season, against a team that isn’t a bottom dweller. That deserves credit. The lion's share of that credit should go to the veteran leadership on this team for keeping everyone together rather than the coaching staff.

        With DA almost assured to keep his job, all I’m looking for in the season finale is to see some more positive play to lead us into the off-season and most importantly to end the seasons with a win to avoid being swept by the Falcons. 

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