The Saints offense looks to keep rolling against Philly’s defense.
Alright, I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. This New Orleans Saints offense has been the best in the league through two weeks. Everyone, including myself, thought it was probably a fluke after their domination of Carolina in week one, but they proved that they’re legit with a 44-19 win over the Dallas Cowboys.
This week, the Saints come back home and will host the 1-1 Philadelphia Eagles, who are fresh off one of their worst losses in franchise history. According to NextGenStats, the Eagles had a 99.3% chance to win with less than two minutes left, making the Falcons comeback victory the seventh most improbable of all-time. Now they have to travel to the Superdome, which will undoubtedly be rocking like it was back when Drew Brees was at the helm.
Derek Carr has been unbelievable through two weeks. He’s completed 30 of his 39 passes for 443 yards (11.3 yards per attempt), five touchdowns and one interception. Klint Kubiak has done a perfect job calling plays for him this season, using the run game and play action to get the opposing defensive line off balance. Through two weeks, the Saints have used play action on 52.3% of their passes compared to 14.4% last year. To further prove my point, Carr was one of the best QBs in the NFL in terms of EPA on play action passes last year, but the Saints ranked dead last in play action usage. Kubiak has been able to take the weakness of this Saints offense – pass protection – and turn it into a strength by using play action and nearly always having a tight end or running back help out in protection.
Through two games, Philly’s pass defense has not been great; Jordan Love and Kirk Cousins have combined to throw for 501 yards, four touchdowns and one interception against them. If Kubiak can continue to scheme up plays like he has the first two weeks, Carr could be in for another efficient outing.
One really interesting thing I found about the Saints offense is that they’ve pretty much only used two receivers to this point. Chris Olave has six catches for 98 yards, Rashid Shaheed has seven catches for 169 yards, but after that, their next leading WR is Mason Tipton who has one catch for six yards. No other WR on the roster even has a target. Obviously, this is partially due to Alvin Kamara getting a good amount of receiving work and the fact that they’re a run-first team, but I just thought it was a bit interesting to see that they’ve only really tried to target two guys.
We’ve talked about the Eagles struggles against the pass already, but one area the Saints need to exploit is the deep ball. We’ve seen Carr and Shaheed hook up on two 50+ yard touchdowns already, and I think they can hit another one this weekend. In week one, Jayden Reed had four catches for 138 yards and a touchdown with a long of 70. In week two, Darnell Mooney had three catches for 58 yards and a touchdown with a long of 41. The Falcons also had Ray-Ray McLeoud who averaged 14 yards per catch. This is an Eagles secondary that susceptible to the big play, so be prepared for another big shot to Shaheed or Olave at some point on Sunday.
The Eagles’ defense has also shown susceptibility to the run through two weeks. In week one, the Packers averaged 7.8 yards per carry on 21 attempts while the Falcons averaged 5.4 on 28 attempts. The Saints currently rank second in rush attempts per game (38) and 11th in yards per attempt (4.9). The Eagles give up 6.4 yards per attempt on the season, which ranks dead last.
Kubiak has done an excellent job with the run game. Last year it was stale, but this year we’re seeing them get outside on almost every attempt. If you look at his NextGenStats rushing chart (click here to see), Kamara rushed the ball between the hashes just four times in their win over Dallas. They worked him heavily to the left side – behind Fuaga – and he saw four of his attempts to that side got for 10+ yards. I would expect that trend to continue, especially against a very good Eagles defensive line. Get Kamara outside and try to take the defensive tackles out of the run game. They do have Zach Baun who’s been playing his butt off through two weeks at LB, but Kamara is great at making guys miss in space.
I’ll admit, I still have some very tiny doubts about if this offense is sustainable, but if they can come out and dominate Philly like they did Dallas, then I’ll be fully on board and completely believe this is real.
Based on the first two weeks, the Saints offense shouldn’t have any problems moving the football against the Eagles, but it’s hard to count them out. The Eagles always seem to have a good defense, and they still have a lot of the same players, so we’ll see if they end up coming around this weekend or not.
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