Regular season

He's the NFL's prime example of the Peter Principle. Great coordinator who's been promoted to a level he just can't handle, twice.

 

I wish, but don't see it happening. I'd be happy to see Curry get the chance to call plays. Don't know how much better he'll be, but it can't be much worse.

I saw something interesting on X yesterday. Believe it or not, the Saints use far more formations and player packages than any other team. With a short week, they're saying you'll see less this week. Wonder if that's part of the problem with getting people in the right places, and maybe doing with less might help.

 

Jaguars 31, Saints 24

I am furious about this one. Not because of the L; I expected that. I expected four quarters of what we saw in the first half; lifeless, clueless football. But... the defense pulled itself together in the third quarter and then in the fourth, the offense suddenly came to life. Not surprised the Jags scored to retake the lead in the closing moments, after all, I'm a Saints fan. But to watch the offense run an excellent time-managed drive to the 6-yard line and then revert to what we've watched for the last 6 and a half games with the ball game on the line....its the morning after and I still want to throw things. I messaged several beat writers on Twittr and begged them to ask why Jimmy Graham was not even on the field in that last series. One did, and the answer was "it was a staff decision." No shit! And here I thought you guys played eeny, meeny, minie, moe on the sidelines to determine who played. Nick Underhill said it very well...the fade pattern in the end zone is a very low percentage throw, but the Saints keep throwing it and hoping they beat the odds. And that, in a nutshell, is the whole season; no rhyme or reason to what they're doing, just hoping to get lucky. AK said in the post game presser, we used to work on mismatches, now we're just running plays. Perfect. Carr was wasted money; I don't see anything from he would couldn't be getting from JW, except that at least Winston seems to get along with the number one receiver. Not on the same page? Olave and Carr aren't even in the same section of the library! Foster Moreau? I'm glad you're beating the cancer, but catch the fuckin' touchdown pass that's right in your hands! But I'm not going to blame the loss on him; that drop was just the last of many plays that contributed to an inexcusable loss. I will say this; the patchwork offensive line pass blocked better than I thought, and when the uptempo stuff started working in second half, the run blocking improved as well. Oh well. Long time to get over this one.

 

Jimmy Graham would not have dropped that pass. Heard an interesting fact regarding JG this morning, keeping in mind that even in his prime, he was not known as a blocker. We ran 21 plays in the red zone last night, and Graham was on field for 6 of them. Not only did he not get a target, we didn't even throw the ball on those 6 plays. He's certainly not contributing as a blocker on those plays. The best red zone tight end the league has ever seen has become nothing more than a red zone decoy at best.

Oh, and regarding Michael Thomas, aka to his detractors as "slant boy." Anyone else notice that we don't even attempt to throw him a slant near the goal line? That was a staple play in the Peyton red zone offense, and not for just MT.

 

Just read the article in the LSU News forum about someone anonymously suggesting Clemson "scouted" LSU before the 2020 championship game. Considering we won by three scores and this was four years ago, why bother with this? And, you may ask, why am I bringing this up in the Saints thread? Because of this paragraph from the article:

We're all agreed that Orgeron is an idiot, but it only took him three possessions in one game to realize what his team was doing wasn't working and making changes. Meanwhile, Dennis Allen and Pete Carmichael refuse to "change it up" through six disastrous offensive performances! If Ed O is an idiot, what does that make these two?

 

Saints 38, Colts 27

Feel much better about this one than the Patriots game, mostly because for the first time all season, the play calling in the red zone actually made sense. The TD pass to Kamara was a very well designed play, and the run package with Saunders leading Hill (most teams doing something like this would call it a Jumbo package; I suggest the Gumbo package) works nicely. The line issues are starting to resolve themselves, and I have to give credit to Peat and Garcia, they look solid as the left side of the line. We took good advantage of the Colts being thin at cornerback, although Olave and Carr still are struggling to get in sync. At least Carr wasn't screaming at him like a maniac. Credit also to Carmichael for calling a competent game, though DA needs to slap him around a bit for going up tempo with 4:00 left and an 8-point lead (I was in the car listening at that point, and I thought Deuce's head was going to explode). Biggest negative I saw was, for the third week in a row, the slow start from the defense. We've got two very winnable games and a bye week to clean that up before....Falcon Week.