The Saints Rebuild Plan Is WORKING | James Skrmetta Reacts

The Saints Rebuild Plan Is WORKING | James Skrmetta Reacts

Just show up. Panthers blueprint backfires as Tyler Shuck shines in Saints victory. Ladies and gentlemen, Matt Mccona is the backdrop after further review. All right, let’s go ahead and react. This is early. I’m doing this video early. Me and the sun rising at the same time to make sure that you get your content every single damn day. Here we go. Remember on Wednesday when we uh did our opposing media interview with uh our buddy Julian Council from Locked on Panthers and one of the questions I always like to ask when we have a guest on that that covers another team, I like to ask like what’s the blueprint for that team to win? Um, it just kind of gives you an idea of from the perspective of someone who covers that team, who knows a lot about them, like what what they think the path would be for that team to win the game. And I asked Julian Council what the Panthers blueprint would be to beat the Saints. Remember what he said? Take care of your business. Just show up. Honestly, if we looked at how New Orleans has played this season, I don’t remember that. I do remember for the last 10 weeks people telling me that Gail Benson should sell the team and Mickey Lumis should be fired and this team is a travesty and the fans don’t deserve this and Tyler Shuck is this and wasted pick and gummack and Mick and we can’t draft and the only good drafts we’ve had is Shawn Payeyton and I do remember all that. I remember that Kell Morrison over his head and we need a coach like uh you know Romeo Krenell or something. We need some old school coach. I remember that. I remember uh the defense is bad. I remember Chris Lave should be traded or released. I remember Joan Johnson should be traded or released. I remember all that. I do. Also, I don’t know anything about the Locked On Panthers podcast guy or whatever, but one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the a danger with a like team beat reporter is that they only watch that team. And if you only watch one team, you can be very siloed in what’s happening in your analysis and whatever. And like for the Panthers guy, he may look at the Saints and their record and uh you know, whatever and may say, “Oh, this team sucks.” You know, he might he might not even look at things like DVOA, things like success rate, things like EPA, things that we look at every single day, okay? Like here, I cover the Saints, right? I do at least one, usually two Saints videos a day, but I have watched every Panthers game this year because I watch every game and it’s the only way you can get real analysis. Even if you just cover one team, you got to watch everything. You have to you have to take a 40,000, you know, foot step back and see the entire league for what it is every single week. just show up. Another example of that is last week. What did I say all week long? All week long I said, I don’t know, guys. Like this Panthers Packers game doesn’t look great. Like the box score, it’s not really a great win for the Panthers. They never made the Packers punt. Packers won YPP. Packers won total yards. James, a win is a win. A win is a win. Don’t be naive. And then lo and behold, I mean, I love my guy. All right. Known Julie in a long time. Seen him at SEC media days for years. I mean, just show up in the NFL is never really a good option. I mean, I don’t know if you know, but and Muse, are the Miami Dolphins having a good season? No, they’re not. Oh, really? They got two of And the coach with the that wears the jeggings. Yeah, they do. With the, you know, with that comes midcafe. Yeah. And you’d think that’d be enough. Yeah. Young guy. Yeah. Mike McDaniel. Yeah, he has. Yeah. He’s like works in it. Yeah. Um Devon Devon A Chain from A&M. A good running back, man. Really good. They’re not They’re no good. No, no, they’re three and seven. Oh, yeah. They’re no good. Oh, good. Yeah. Hey, are the Buffalo same amount of wins as the Falcons? The Bills having a good season. Bills pretty good. Yeah. Are they You know what? I thought about this last night. If I was Buffalo, I’d be worried. I would not be surprised if Buffalo barely made the playoffs or missed the playoffs. Really? Mhm. They’re pretty good. Remember when the Bills stunk? Yes. Yeah. They’re good now. Good. Well, Josh Allen, man, really kind of turned around. Shawn McDermott. Yeah. Yeah. Good franchise. Good organization. Didn’t they play yesterday? They played each other. Yeah, they did. How’d that go? Uh Miami won 30-13. Oh. Oh, really? Yeah. That was another one you could have saw coming where the Miami Baltimore game the previous week. Miami arguably outplayed Baltimore, but lost because of turnovers, some missed opportunities, whatever. But they were getting what they wanted against Baltimore. And then Buffalo rolls in. Horrible defense. So the really bad team beat the really good team handedly. Yeah. So apparently Buffalo didn’t show up. Doesn’t look like it. If they had just shown up, they probably would have won because that’s all you got to do, right? Some would say that. Yes. Just show up. M I mean like if we were talking about a great team, like if we were talking about Tom Brady’s Patriots against the same old sorry ass Jets for all those years. Okay, I kind of get it. Like just just show up. You’re probably going to it’s probably going to go your way. Like the Panthers aren’t good. I mean, they’re not respect. And didn’t didn’t you learn the week prior the danger of just showing up when Carolina sorry as Carolina went up to Green Bay and 11613. Here’s the deal. As long as the football is oblong shaped and bounces around the ground and as long as you have kickers and there’s 11 players on the field independently doing for each side doing independently their own thing on any given play. There are there is going to be there is so much randomness baked into the NFL or just a football game. There’s so much randomness baked in that it it’s never like in chess in chess the better player always wins because there’s no randomness. It’s it’s it’s as linear as it can possibly get. So a good player is always going to beat a bad player unless he just throws, you know, unless we get something like that. The NFL is not like that. And that’s why it’s so important to really get into the weeds because that’s the only way you can even attempt to figure this thing out. That’s a danger of just think you’re just going to show up. It’s the NFL, man. Just show up. That’s tough. I kind of want to pull we pull the audio. I don’t know if when he said that if I was on camera. Uh Paulie, do you know like if if I was like if if we had Julian’s uh still up because I kind of want to pull see what my facial reaction was during that just show up is I think you and I were both kind of like Yeah. Because I mean it’s any given Sunday. How many times we have to hear that every year? It’s the NFL, bro. Like I mean whenever you say that your ears do perk up because it’s like wait what did he just say? Yeah. What? The Carolina Panthers, especially the Panthers, really the Panthers who But you talk about smelling your own farts is the Panthers who were five wins. I that week, you know, I was listening to not Panthers content, but it was just like national content and they were saying like, you know, if Carolina beats the Saints and then if they beat the Falcons, like this could be a playoff team. Like even the national media, I think, was kind of getting like, man, Carolina, all right, five wins. Well, hold on a second here. They’re kind of turning things together. They beat Green Bay. Bryce Young taking a step, lol. And now is crashing right back down to earth with, “Okay, all right, fine. Bryce Young’s not the guy.” Who got dusted by New England 42-13, who got run over by Buffalo 40 to9? I mean, lo lost the Cardinals. They’re no good. I mean, Saints lost the Cardinals, too, but the Saints aren’t any good. Yes. Anyway, the moral of the story is in two very different games, the Saints hung with the Cardinals very close last second situation, the Panthers were getting dominated by the Cardinals and had to have some miraculous comeback with onside kicks and all kind of craziness. If you’re ever doing a radio interview and someone asks you what the blueprint is for your team to win, I wouldn’t go with just show up. That’s liable to bite you. Liable to bite you. Shout out to Julian Council though. Locked on Panthers. Good dude. Terrible answer. Awful answer to the question. Great dude and really good at his job. It’s possible to be really good at what you do and to give an awful answer. That’s a guy who’s really good at what he does and gave an awful answer to that question. I’m really good at what I do. Okay, don’t get it twisted. Uh Alen Mo, by the way, Ellen Moore, he met with reporters on Monday. was asked if Sunday was the team’s most complete performance of the year. Here’s what he said. Yes. Felt like it was nice to see complimentary football in three phases working together. Certainly saw that with just the way that thing played out and so I felt like it was uh one of our cleaner games protecting the football, creating turnovers. Great. Um playing a physical game in all three phases. So, uh hopefully something we can build on. The the biggest conversation point though obviously is about Tyler Shuck. So, um, my feeling, I think, about Shuck’s day is probably like a lot of you had, I’m not sitting here ready to to coronate Tyler Shuck, uh, as a Hall of Famer or even as the Saints future starter, as the franchise. What what I think is undeniable out of Sunday is you saw enough there to say, “Oh, that could be something.” his ability to move in the pocket, keep his eyes downfield, certainly the arm strength clearly is there, the accuracy on the deep ball to Chris Ave. Let me let me explain how easy this is because I I I’ve been, you know, I see hundreds of comments today and I I’m seeing this in the comments, but it’s it’s this simple. Is he good enough from what you saw to be the starter in the next game? Yes. Okay, that’s it. That’s it. You don’t have to worry about is he the franchise, is he the starter next year, is he this, is he the next J breeze, is he whatever. We’re not up against the clock with a contract. We don’t have to do any of that stuff. It right now it’s just is he the starter next week? Okay. Then we grade that. Is he the starter the next week? Okay. Then we grade that. Then we grade that. Then we grade that. And then we head into the off season. And at that point, then we decide which direction do we go in? Do we go in the Tyler Shuck direction or do we go in the drafted quarterback direction? But as of right now, all you got to worry about is grading that performance and then on to the next one. And the play on the 52 y to Jawan Johnson, the catch and run. I have said this a million times, but franchises so desperately want to tell their fans that they have their franchise quarterback that they rush into contracts and try and it’s like a scop. They try and trick their fan base into thinking we have our franchise guy. Tua, Jordan Love, Trevor Lawrence, all these guys. Jordan Love especially, that guy got a contract off of like six games, six good performances, and then all of a sudden, boom, $200 million. He’s our franchise guy. Are we sure he’s good? Are we sure he’s even good? Much less a 200 whatever million dollar guy. H how do we know? And franchises want to tell their they want to tell everyone. They want to tell the world, “Don’t worry guys, we got our franchise quarterback, maybe we should take some time, you know, like maybe we should take a season or two before we start handing out 200 plus million dollar contracts, right? And I’m not saying Tyler Shucks even, you know, I’m not saying that’s part of the conversation, but just as far as evaluating. Luckily for us, and and I this is this is really what I wanted to talk about in this video. Something else that I’ve been saying for probably six months now, and it’s very difficult to hear whenever you’re one and eight or one and whatever is that the Saints are kind of sneaky, highkey, low-key set up really, really well moving forward. I I re I laid back and I thought about it. You look at Atlanta, you look at Carolina, you look at some of these other teams, the Jets, and you look at their situations and it’s like, man, this situation is terrible. Like, let’s just take let’s just take Carolina. You have, you know, we I mean, the Saints fans are still talking about Caesar Ruiz and his the draft pick. They’re still talking about Payton Turner, right? Trevor Penning. Now imagine if you trade from nine to one to take a quarterback and the quarterback can’t play. Imagine that. Look at Atlanta. You’ve got all these top 10 picks who are actually good. Like Drake London is good. Bon Robinson is good. You’ve got the Kirk Cousins fiasco. $50 million backup quarterback. Michael Pennix who can’t play. All right. You’ve got Kyle Pittz who whatever. He had a knee injury. what hadn’t been the same player since, but still serviceable, whatever. Shouldn’t shouldn’t have been taken that high, but it is what it is. Okay, you trade up in the draft to take a defensive player. All right, defense has been okay. You’ve got one of the worst head coaches in the NFL. You’ve got an offensive coordinator who is lost. So, if you’re the Falcons and you got three wins right now, you are up against it because now you’re going to start paying these players. You’ve had all these rookies, you had all these young guys, and now you’re probably gonna fire your coach. You’re probably gonna fire your OC. What are you gonna do at quarterback? Who are you going to pay? Who are you going to let walk? And you haven’t had a winning season in almost 10 years. The Jets. All right. Aaron Glenn is a lame duck coach. He’s going to be fired. Okay. You paid Justin Fields $40 million and he cannot play. He is negatively impacting the team. All right. You traded away all of your good players for the most part. Garrett Wilson is just is out for like four weeks now. Not that it matters, but these other teams are in horrible situations. And then you look at the Saints. Kell Moore, rookie head coach, youngest head coach in the NFL, 36 years old. You’ve got a rookie quarterback, a rookie left tackle, a secondyear right tackle. You’ve got a young wide receiver. You’ve got nine rookies who have come in out of the last draft class who, you know, it’s funny because I thought the only reason the Saints drafted good players was Shawn Peyton. But it looks as if we may have nailed this draft class. And maybe it’s not Mickey Lumis just making horrible draft picks. Maybe it’s like a big, you know, it’s like a it’s like a brain trust. Like a lot of people have opinions and the coaches give their input and the scouts do their thing and, you know, it’s a system match or whatever. But it looks like this draft class has been pretty damn good. The salary cap is getting figured out whether it’ll be figured out next year or 2027 or whatever, but it’s getting figured out. The biggest contracts that have been impacting us are slowly coming off of the books. Whether it’s Ryan Ramch, whether it’s Derek Carr, whether it’s Michael Thomas, whether it’s, you know, who DeMario Davis or whoever you want to name, they’re slowly coming off the books or coming to their natural end, right? You nailed the trade deadline with getting, you know, offloading Rashici and Trevor Pinning for picks. You’ve got at least seven picks coming up into this draft where you probably will have a top five pick. I mean, things are looking sweet. I know the record is what it is, but you but if you look around the league at some of these other teams as far as a rebuild, the Saints are light years ahead of where they need to be. These other teams I just mentioned, they got to go through a coaching search. They got to go through contracts with young players. They got to go through letting some players walk. They got to go through a new system. They got to go through a new scheme for Atlanta and Carolina. possibly a quarterback change, you know. So, the like until it’s funny because before the win, I had people saying, “James, you know, where did you get it wrong?” And 24 hours later, 48 hours later after the win, I’ve got people saying, “Oh, I see the light now. I see it now.” which is a funny way of saying you do have to kind of look past the results, right? The New Orleans Saints are in an incredible situation for where they are. We knew we weren’t going to win this year. We knew it wasn’t a playoff year. We knew it was a rebuilding year. This is kind of well, not kind of, this is year one of the rebuild. This is it. Last year at this time, Derek Carr was the starting well, Derek Carr was the starting quarterback. At this time, Dennis Allen was the head coach. Think about how how short of a time frame it’s been since that. And now look at where we are. Could not be in a better situation moving forward. And you know, we’ll see how it all plays out. But as far as a rebuild goes and where we are positioned, I mean the front office, the team, the coaches, the play, they nailed this. Nailed this. Could not be in a better spot to rebuild. Avoided about three different wouldbe defenders. Um really imp protected the football. I mean all check all the way through that. Well, what about after they they watched the film? Here was here was Ellen on Monday. Ellen Moore after they watched the film. Yeah, I thought there’s a lot of positives. Every game’s going to have some opportunities um that we’re going to want want to get back and that that everyone falls in the same boat for that. I think um you know there’s a lot of positives there. I thought, you know, the hard downs, the third downs I thought were a huge factor. Yeah, they were great on third down and in the offense um yesterday. I thought he made some incredible plays moving in the pocket, guys staying alive and so uh you he delivered downfield, made some big plays. Even the touchdown to Jan. I mean I think they said after the game that that was like his third or fourth progression like Ross Jackson wrote about this in Louisiana sports net like that ball wasn’t supposed to go to Jawan but he went through his third fourth progression. I mean that shows you’re talking about a guy that’s 26 years old man played seven years of college football. has been around a long time and had the opportunity for the first two months of the season to sit and watch and maybe that benefited him. Now the Saints go into their buy an opportunity to rest to continue to grow there with Shuck as the starter. Well, not only that, but look what Atlanta has to do, right? Because we played them next by the way, but Atlanta leaves Berlin, comes back to the States, immediately has to play Carolina, then they got to play the Saints. So, they get no rest. We need Atlanta to beat Carolina and then all of a sudden that’s a great spot for the Saints. Saints are rested. A lot of momentum. Atlanta will be tired. If they come off of a win, great spot for us. See how they do in a home game. Granted, if they lose then maybe you get some turnover, maybe more maybe there, you know, maybe Raheem gets canned or Robinson gets canned or they go back to Cousins or you never know. But great spot for the Saints against the Falcons. the Falcons where I can assure you they will have to do more than just show up. Uh by the way, on third down the Saints were eight of 17 on third down. Yep. On Sunday against the Panthers, the uh the Panthers were three of nine on third down. Hey, it’s like the I mean, it seems like the Saints always hold their opponent to around 30% now on third down. Seems like it’s just a thing. Remember when third down used to be a problem for the Saints? It’s like even that seems like so long ago. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Good stuff. Thank you for watching. remember 20% off the freaking store. I had a ton of orders come in uh yesterday. Had like 10 plus orders. So again, guys, I’m telling you, we do not have that much merch left. 20% off the store until kickoff in the Atlanta game. If you want your merch, get it now. The hats, especially the hats, are going fast. uh the JLS like in like the shield hat that I wear all the time. We may have probably less than 10 of uh of each, the black one and the white one. So, get your stuff now. I’ll be shipping out orders probably starting probably tomorrow. So, get your stuff in. Get it quick. Get your merch to wear before the Falcons game. 20% off the store. You don’t have to have a code or anything. Just automatically applies. Thank you for watching. I will see you in the next

The New Orleans Saints are AHEAD of schedule in their rebuild and the rest of the NFL needs to take notice. In this video, James Skrmetta breaks down how Kellen Moore has this Saints team firing on all cylinders, how rookie QB Tyler Shough continues to impress, and why the Saints’ young core including Kelvin Banks and a stacked 2025 draft class has them perfectly positioned for long-term success. From offensive growth to defensive discipline, this team is proving doubters wrong week after week. Are the Saints quietly building the next NFC powerhouse?

Watch as James Skrmetta dives deep into the Saints’ rebuild timeline, roster construction, and why their future looks brighter than ever. If you’re a Saints fan or love smart football talk, hit LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more Saints coverage, game reactions, and weekly breakdowns from the #1 most-watched Saints creator in New Orleans.

JAMES SKRMETTA MERCH: https://jamesskrmetta.store/

REACTION VIDEO: “Just Show Up” | Panthers Blueprint Backfires as Tyler Shough SHINES In Saints Victory @AFRSaints https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1VMWyCxvb8

SEND JAMES A VOICE MESSAGE: https://www.speakpipe.com/JamesSkrmetta

Join the James Skrmetta Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesSkrmetta/

James Skrmetta Gaming: @JamesSkrmettaGaming
James Skrmetta Wrestling: @JamesSkrmettaWrestling
James Skrmetta+: @JamesSkrmettaPLUS

James Skrmetta on TWITCH: https://www.twitch.tv/james_skrmetta

Follow James Skrmetta on Social Media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/James_Skrmetta
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jskrmetta/
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@james_skrmetta

#nfl
#neworleanssaints

New Orleans Saints, Saints rebuild, Kellen Moore Saints, Tyler Shough Saints, Kelvin Banks Saints, Saints highlights, Saints vs Panthers recap, Saints future, Saints 2025 draft class, New Orleans Saints rebuild analysis, Saints young core, NFC South rebuild, Saints quarterback Tyler Shough, Saints coach Kellen Moore, Saints rebuild plan, Saints roster breakdown, James Skrmetta Saints, Saints football analysis, Who Dat Nation, New Orleans Saints 2025 outlook