Checking in on the Saints

            Now that we’re 1/4^th of the way through the football season, it’s time to check in on New Orleans Saints. With a record of 1-3, New Orleans is tied for last place in the NFC South. They’ve scored 86 points (18^th in the NFL) and allowed 104 (24^th), a -18 point differential (23^rd). On the plus side, the Saints have played in a lot of close games; the last three weeks have been decided by one score or less—the Week One loss against the Cardinals was within one score until Arizona score a late touchdown to put the game away. At 1-3, FiveThirtyEight’s ELO ratings system predicts the Saints will go 6-10 and them a 13% chance of making the playoffs. The schedule offers some hope for improvement as the Saints have games left against the perennially weak AFC South (Colts, Titans, Jaguars, and Texans) and a bunch of underperforming NFC teams including the Eagles, Lions, Washington, and the Buccaneers. On the flip side they have tougher games ahead against the resurgent Falcons, the New York Giants, and Carolina. Let’s now look at some of the big storylines from the season’s first four games.

The Saints better hope that shoulder is healthy. 

Drew Brees and his shoulder: First, the good news. Brees went 33-41 yesterday completing 80.5% of his passes, good for a 80.7 QBR. He averaged 8.76 yards per attempt, well above his career average of 7.4. Now the bad news. Brees threw nearly all of his passes within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. If you take out the last play of the game where Dallas forgot to cover C.J. Spiller and he ran the ball 80 yards for a touchdown, Brees averaged an anemic 6.8 yards per pass attempt, much more in line with his performance before his injury. Without a downfield threat, good defenses (not Dallas) will stack the line of scrimmage and take away Brees’s throwing lanes. Some of this could be alleviated by the running game, which I’ll discuss below. The other concern is with Brees’ bruised rotator cuff. Since this is a repetitive stress injury, the more times Brees throws, the worse the situation can get. We don’t know the extent of Brees’s injury or how well it has or hasn’t healed. But combining the nature of the injury and what the Saints have asked him to do, there’s still a lot to worry about.

Running Game: A strong running game might take the pressure off of Brees’s shoulder, but the Saints have gotten little return on their $32 million dollar investment in C.J. Spiller and Mark Ingram. Ingram has rushed the ball 56 times for 204 yards for a 3.6 yards per carry average. Spiller meanwhile only has 6 rushes for 21 yards, good for 3.5 yards per carry. For comparison sake, a league average running back should average about 4 yards per carry. And this isn’t a situation where you can blame the Saints offensive line. According to Football Outsiders they rank 14^th in adjusted line yards—a statistic that measures both the effectiveness of the offensive line and the running backs. The running backs meanwhile rank 30^th in open field yards—the offensive line is opening up running lines, but the running backs have failed to exploit them. According to DVOA, the New Orleans rushing offense ranks 17^th in the NFL at -4.3% (meaning they’re 4.3% below league average). If the Saints want to help out Brees, Ingram and Spiller need to play better.

Meet Brandon Browner: defensive penalty machine 

Defense: Any offensive improvement is all for naught if the Saints defense can’t stop opposing offenses. If they’re not allowing big plays, they’re committing penalties. According to Pro-Football Reference’s penalty index, cornerback Brandon Browner has committed four defensive holding penalties, one illegal contact penalty, a face mask, and defensive pass interference. All seven penalties have resulted in first downs and have given Saints opponents 75 extra yards of field position. The Saints defense played okay against Dallas right up until you consider they were playing the Cowboys without their starting quarterback, Tony Romo, and their top receiver, Dez Bryant. The Saints played okay until the moment it gave up an eight play, 91 yard drive to Brandon Weeden, the Cowboys 31 year old backup quarterback. With former Raiders head coach and Broncos defensive coordinator Dennis Allen now on the coaching staff, how long until Rob Ryan is sent packing?

How much longer does this partnership last? 

In-Game Decision Making: Head Coach Sean Payton displayed some seriously bad clock management in Sunday night’s game. After the referee and replay official confirmed that Terrence Williams had scored a game tying touchdown, Payton took his last timeout to argue the call. Why he did this defies explanation. There was nothing to argue and no way to overturn it, the play was a touchdown. While Payton managed to express his dissatisfaction, he cost the Saints their last chance to stop the clock as Brees attempted to drive the team down the field for the game winning score.

The other screw up occurred as New Orleans had the ball on their own 43 yard line with 4:24 left in the fourth quarter. On first down, Brees threw an incomplete pass stopping the clock at 4:21. On second down, Brees completed a pass to Ingram who went for five yards and took the ball out of bounds, stopping the clock at 4:16. On third down, Payton called for another pass that fell incomplete, stopping the clock at 4:12. The Saints then punted the ball back to Dallas after running 3 plays in only 12 seconds. With a seven point lead, the Saints needed to be running down the clock as well as trying to advance the ball. Why Ingram ran out of bounds is inexplicable. Surely he should have known or should have been reminded to stay in bounds in order to keep the clock running. If Ingram had stayed in bounds, the Saints could have run the clock down to about 3:40. Had they run the ball on third down that would have taken the clock down to about 3:00. Instead Payton called for another pass play that fell incomplete. On just those two plays the Saints handed Dallas over a minute of extra game time. Dallas put those added seconds to good use as Brandon Weeden got the ball back with 4:05 (instead of about 2:55 or so) and drove the Cowboys 91 yards down the field for the game tying touchdown.   

The Saints weak schedule offers some hope, but not without improved play from everyone on the team, including the coaching staff.