Why the Saints Season Starts NOW | James Skrmetta Reacts

Why the Saints Season Starts NOW | James Skrmetta Reacts

Is Tyler Shuck the Saint’s future, realistic hopes for New Orleans after the by-week. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Hunt. Okay, so the reason we’re doing this video, y’all know why? Because last week we did a video, the Hunt Palmer show was talking about uh the travesty that is the New Orleans Saints and how it’s not fair for the fans to go through this and that Gail should sell the team and that Mickey Lum should step down and it was an impassioned plea. And I just want to give a snapshot of what I assume is going to be a very different tone in this video. Okay. So, we’re going to watch it, react along the way, do what we can do. It’s early morning on a Thursday. Again, up with the sun to make sure y’all have content. Does anybody do it better? Start the hour with some Saints discussion. Uh they finally made it to the bye-week. This is something uh that we were looking at really all of the offseason, summer into training camp as as a potential line of delineation between the beginning of the season where you’re really trying to figure out just like what you got. We don’t know what we got at quarterback. We don’t know what we got at head coach. We don’t know what we got in terms of all these rookies. You really I mean what do we got? We don’t know. And you got a tough start that involved some really difficult road games. You knew it was going to be tough to go on the road to Seattle. I knew it was going to be tough to go on the road to Buffalo. Um, now it’s a chance to reset. We had pointed really to this week as the week for Tyler Shuck potentially to take over. Doesn’t it feel like the Buccaneers game or the Bears game or pick pick a game was like 10 years ago? I mean, here’s how I look at it and it sounds crazy to me. The Saints are one and0. And I’m not saying like, you know, as far as like playoffs and stuff like that, but just they’re 1 and0 because so much has changed in the last couple of weeks. Not only Tyler Shuck being the starting quarterback, but the Rasheed Shahed trade, the Trevor Penning trade. I mean, the team feels different, looks different, operates different, the fans are talking different, the attitude is different, the vibe is different. We’re 1 and0 going into the by-week with Atlanta on the other side of it. And I’ve said this a million times. It is such a bad spot for Atlanta. They play in Berlin, they lose an overtime game to the Colts where they get ran all over. And in football, running plays are much more physically intensive defensively than passing plays. It’s a lot more hitting. It’s a lot more There’s more plays on average. Uh, and to have Jonathan Taylor do that to you, you feel it. Okay, I can guarantee you that. Then they come back from Germany, no by-week, go straight into a divisional game against Carolina. We’ll see how that goes. Then no by-week, they go to the Superdome to take on the Saints, who are coming off of a by-week. Okay, like horrible scheduling spot for Atlanta. Great scheduling spot for the Saints depending on how the early portion of the season went. And now we’re here and the win loss record’s terrible. Uh, question, honest question. Right now, Thursday morning, November 13th, honest question. Do you care about the win loss record right now? Do you do is it even factoring into how you look at this team? I can honestly say the only thing the record has to do with me and like how I view the team or how I view what’s going on is the draft pick. Beyond that could care less. We knew it was going to be a bad year as far as like you know playoff opportunity and winning the division or whatever. Once we got to that critical mass point where all right, we’re not catching lightning in a bottle. We’re not going to have some surprise season. It is going to be bad. Once we got to that point, then you’re just looking at performances. Then you’re just looking at the four quarters in the game. Okay? You’re looking at how are we playing in this game? What’s our performance in this game? What steps have we taken forward? And for a while there, we were taking steps backwards like the Chicago game and the Bucks game. And those are frustrating because when you’re not looking at the record and you’re just looking at the performance and the performance is taking a step back, you got a lot of questions to ask for sure. But yeah, I could care less about the overall record. The quarterback change has been made. Some of the returns on the young players have been positive. Some of them have been negative. and you’ve made a couple of significant trades in terms of your current roster. You traded away a starter on the offensive line and your most explosive pass catcher. So, the circumstances are different now than they were in August. That’s fair to say. Yes. But you look at the second half of the schedule and it’s extremely manageable. You can manage games against the Titans and Jets and Panthers. You’ve got home games that you feel like you should have a chance to compete in even if they’re against teams that have a better record than you. So, you’ve reached a point now where we can kind of reset expectation based on what we know. Tough to set expectations for this team August the 3. I don’t know who the quarterback is. I don’t know what the coach does. I don’t know how well the defense is going to take, especially with all those veterans to Brandon Staley. I don’t know what their injury status is going to be. There’s so many variables. You know, it’s not going to be great, but like what can you really pinpoint? Well, now we’ve got more to look at. And of course, that discussion is going to start with Tyler Shuck. And I’m willing to have that discussion now. Like, what are you looking for? Well, first, let’s look back at what we saw in his start. I watched it every snap and I liked what I saw. I thought he was efficient. Thought he was effective. Thought he took some shots down the field. Thought that he moved the offense. Am I going to go nuts and throw an absolute jubilation of a party because they’ve scored 17 points? No, you don’t have to. That’s important as well. We don’t have to go one way or the other. We can just chill. And if you have been watching this channel, you’ve heard me say sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Sometimes the best thing to do is just sit back and observe and see what’s going on. Whether it’s with Kell Moore, whether it’s with Brandon Staley, whether it’s with Spencer Ratler, whether it’s with Tyler Shuck, whether it’s with Kendra Miller, whether it’s with Devin Neil or Chris Ave or whoever. You don’t have to make a decision every single week. You don’t have to either build the statue or tear down the statue. You don’t have to buy the jersey, sell the jersey. You don’t have to do any of that stuff, right? And that is confusing, I think, because we live in such a knee-jerk reaction world, such a hottake world. After week one, after week two, after week three, we were already hearing, “Well, is Kell Moore this? I don’t know. I got I don’t know. I got reservations about Kell Moore. I don’t know if he can do this. I think he’s in over his head. I don’t know.” I said, “Guys, you got to give it more than, you know, 90 plays. We got to see a little bit more.” And the 17 points thing, no offense, to me, that is a red flag. If you hear someone say, “Well, the Saints offense wasn’t great. They only scored 17 points.” I mean, maybe I need to print out like a football 101 master class that I can just hand out to people to explain that it’s not 1995. And you don’t just sort by points and say, “Okay, that’s good or that’s bad.” YPP Saints were around six in that game. They ended up like a two and a half yards per play, maybe even been three yards per play difference in Carolina. The last drive of the game was a 14play 8 minute 7 minutes and 40 second drive to end the game that resulted in zero points and 0 for one in the red zone. That was the best drive of the day by far and it didn’t have a single point. Saints were playing with the lead all day. Saints completely ended the game in the second half. They didn’t have to push. They didn’t have to score at the end. They chose to kneel it out. whatever the 17 points thing, they were 0 for two in the red zone. You know, the 17 points thing, that is the ultimate telling on yourself if you’re using that as, well, the offense wasn’t as good as you thought. That is why we look at YPP. That is why we look at success rate. That is why we look at EPA because those, if we’re trying to really analyze the performance, those matter. If you’re trying to analyze just the final score, the points matter. But the passing chart I very much enjoyed. Here’s why. I’ve got it pulled up for Pro Football Focus, and I’ll talk you through it. He only threw two passes behind the line of scrimmage. Only two. One outside the numbers, got blown up for a loss of two, and one inside the numbers that went for 26 yards. But if you remember with Spencer Rattler early in the season, it was just too much. Too much dinking, dunk, dinking, dunk, dinking, dunk. That’s all you saw. Take a shot. It just wasn’t happening early. Well, Tyler Shuck wasn’t just dinking and dunking. He only threw the ball inside behind the line of scrimmage twice. Now, you look at the next set of passes, which is under 10 yards, between the line of scrimmage and 10 yards. These are your quick passes, your quick game, your screens just beyond the line of scrimmage, uh your your quick outs, your short yardage throws, and he was very efficient with those. 0 to 10, he was 11 of 14 in the game. Um, and got the ball out quickly where it needed to go. But it wasn’t all that he did. Cuz if you look beyond 10 yards, he was four of five between 10 and 20 yards, one of the touchdowns to Jawan Johnson. And then if you go between 10 yards and further, so longer than 10 yards, he really was effective. He was six out of Let me make sure my math’s right. Six out of that’s seven six out of 10 and had a pair of touchdowns including the deep ball to a lave for 6 uh2 yards. If you look at throws beyond 20 yards down the field, he hit a pair of those and they combined for 104 yards. So, he didn’t just dink and dunk like you saw from Rattler. He did stretch the field. He did hit big plays. He was fairly effective at all levels of the field. So, that’s a tiny sample size, tiny in one game against Carolina, but it’s encouraging and it’s a difference from Spencer Rattler. To me, as I look at Chuck, I want to see him continue to hit all levels of the field, hit big plays, and be efficient when you are checking it down. Well, this is also like an offense thing like like you want to see the offense grow as Shuck grows, right? So, you want to see the offense continue to be explosive. You want to see the off like more like Alvin had a screen all of a sudden, like more of that. Now, you want to see some of these wrinkles, right? You want to see some of run the ball. You want to see maybe even some read option or RPA or whatever. You want to see some screens. You want to see taking shots downfield. You want to see the intermediate like, “All right, now let’s see Kell kind of get into his bag.” And this isn’t all a product of Tyler Shuck or this isn’t all revolved around Tyler Shuck. Kellen is also a rookie head coach and hopefully he progresses as the year goes on and his play calling and all that and the rhythm and just getting into a tempo and all that stuff progresses. So hopefully some of that play calling gets better as well and just continues to be good and we’ll, you know, the same things we look at all the time. Can they start fast? What are they doing in the first quarter? What are they doing with their first possession? You know, things like that. How how are they handling end of half, end of game? Those are the things that hopefully keep taking steps. And to me, you’re going 13 of 16 total, under 10 yards, and you’re hitting two big plays down the field. I like that rhythm. I like that chart. I like all those things when it comes to running the offense. So, I like that from Shook. I want to see a little bit more of that in the second half of the season. The other guy I wanted to profile today in in terms of looking towards the second half of the season is Kelvin Banks. Kelvin Banks has played 641 snaps at left tackle for you to this point. If you just look at his Pro Football Focus grades, respectable 68.3 overall in blocking, 67 overall in run blocking, 68.9 in pass blocking. One thing that steps stands out there, it’s all balanced. It’s all pretty good. I know we’ve got a portion listening to this that really only does Saints. Got a portion listening to this that listens to the whole show terrestrial radio does LSU and Saints. The Pro Football focus grades when we talk about LSU and talk about the Saints are very different. College kids have higher grades. They’re playing against lesser competition at times. You see a lot of 70s and 80s and even into the low 90s at times. That’s very, very, very rare in the NFL. You live in the upper 60s, low 70s, high 70s, up to 80. That’s quality work. And Kelvin Banks has given you that in the run game and the passing game. There’s one area I would really like to see Kelvin Banks clean up. He has been flagged seven times. It’s not even once a game. I need that number to come down. And I think that’s realistic when you consider that he’s gaining experience and he’s now seen more than he did early in the season. I feel like a lot of Kelvin’s penalties and I have to go back and look obviously, but I feel like a lot of them are false starts, you know, things like that, which for a rookie new system, I would assume Kell system is relatively complicated. It makes sense, right? that, you know, that all that that all is fine. And I think that will uh that will clean up. If it was all holding, if it’s all stuff like that where he’s he’s having trouble technique-wise and he’s just constantly being flagged for whatever, hands in the face or holding or then then you maybe you’re like, “Okay, this is more of a technique issue.” But yeah, I mean, look, it’s not sexy. It’s left tackle, but the fact that the ninth overall pick, rookie left tackle, is playing really well, we’re not really talking about him that much, is a good thing. I mean, having him on the left, Fuaga on the right, and I know Foga’s been banged up and up and down this year, but when Fuaga is healthy, I think none none of us are concerned about Fuaga. I think at the baseline, he’s a good player. Will he be a Hall of Famer? I I don’t know. Will Kelvin Banks? I don’t know. But having a rookie left tackle, secondyear right tackle, rookie quarterback, rookie head coach. Sometimes you’re getting holding calls. Sometimes it’s a a false start. You got a guy across from you that’s a really good pass rusher. You’re trying to get a head start. Like, I get it. That’s too many penalties. I like the blocking grades. When that ball’s snapped and you’re asked to do a job, I like what he’s doing to this point. penalties need to come down a little bit uh for Kelvin Banks and that’s something I’m looking at. And as far as defense goes, there are a couple of young players who I think have have really um impressed to this point that you Yeah. Isaiah Stalberg, Danny Stsman, Quincy Riley, Jonas Sanker. What What do all them have in common? Ladies and gentlemen, this is an easy question. They’re all rookies. So, in this video, now remember the front office is a travesty and Gail Benson should sell the team to Todd Graves and Mickey Lumis. Can’t draft without Shawn Peyton. Remember in this video, we’re talking about those four rookies. We’re talking about Kelvin Banks. We’re talking about Tyler Shuck. And we’re talking about Kell Moore. Seven rookies. Seven. Okay. And that’s not even talking about Devin Neil who looked fine. Seven rookies. That is crazy. Like seven rookies between coach and players that are making a lit a legitimate impact on this team. And it wasn’t too long ago, it was actually seven days ago that we were being force-fed that this is a disaster. This is a travesty. More Caniacs in the Superdome. This team can’t put together anything. This team can’t draft. This front office doesn’t know what they’re doing. The scouting department doesn’t know what’s going on. This is making me sick to my stomach. a week later. Well, we actually have seven rookie. Well, wow. This is actually I don’t know. Maybe there’s something here. Well, hold on a second. Want to see more of I love Danny Stzman and the way he has played the run. It’s something I’ve noticed on tape. Um well, not on when I’m watching the games and it’s something that Pro Football Focus agrees with. 76.1 in terms of his run defense. Tackling’s got to improve a little bit. It’s only a Who could have seen this coming? Oh, I know me. Why? Because he had a 90 run defense grade in college. He was an elite run stopper at Oklahoma. 47 grade and I think he’s going to get more snaps. You’ve only seen 63 total snaps in six games from Stman. I think that number might double in the second half of the season. It would not surprise me to see Stzman finish with somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 snaps this year. I’m looking at that linebacker spot. I’m looking at an aging Demorio Davis who by the way played brilliant football in Carolina and still has something in the tank and and should be out there to show young players how you’re supposed to play down in and down out and to help this team to to to try to win games. But I think you’re gonna don’t get this twisted either. Everyone wants to trade everybody and cut everybody and release everybody. But imagine if we draft Arll Reese and imagine if you’ve got Deario Davis like master freaking Splinter, okay, with the Ninja Turtles and he is mentoring Stalberg, Stzman, Werner and and Arll Reese. I mean, come on. See Stzman more and I love the way he’s played uh against the run. And then I just need more consistency from Jonas Sanker on the defensive side. Like some of the grades are good week to week. Some of the uh the playmaking has been good. He’s been around the football for some turnovers. Also, his tackling grade at this point is 29.5. Yeah, he’s had some real whiffs. That’s got to improve. You can’t miss that many tackles. He’s at a missed tackle percentage right now of 18% and they’re crediting him to this point with 10 missed tackles. That’s second on the team to Demario Davis who oh by the way is in yeah he’s in on so many tackles way more often and way more reps than Sanker so that’s to be expected that’s when you go to the percentage so that’s why percentages are a thing rudimentary checklist of what I’m looking for for New Orleans Chuck I want to see all levels not just checkdowns all levels be efficient he was in in in this game and then I want to see Banks limit those penalties, continue to play at the level he is outside of the penalties, and then defensively more from Stzman in terms of reps and tackling, better tackling from Sanker. I’m trying I’m cutting these things down into little bitty sample sizes. Like I’m cutting these things down into some small things you’re looking for. I don’t think it’s realistic to look at this go, well, I I look at the Saints in the second half, I think they should win five games. Yeah, who cares? Yeah, that’s it. But but that’s the same it’s the same thing as the first half. You cannot go into this with the evaluation of we got to win every game and we got to win 10 games or we got to win 11 games or 12 games or win the division or whatever in a rebuild when in an exploratory situation and this was this was the most exploratory situation of all time. completely new 100% turnover from the coaching staff, new defensive scheme, new offensive scheme, rookie head coach, either a rookie quarterback or a secondyear quarterback, young wide receivers, rookie left. Like, this was as exploratory as possible. And this is how people should have been viewing this team at the beginning of the season. But if you view this just through wins and losses and you set your expectations that we should beat this team, we should win every game at home, we should win the South, we should win whatever, you’re going to be let down 100%. And every single week we came on here and we did our grades and we talked about players and we talked about whatever. And I had people slobbering all over their keyboard saying, “Stfu, James, we lost. The only the final score is the only thing that matters.” Okay. And now all of a sudden, 10 weeks later, everyone’s right where we need to be. Everyone sees things clearly. All right. Now, ladies and gentlemen, well, I’ll let them finish easy now. Like, they got to do a lot of things to build towards that. And I’m looking at young players. Shucks the most important. Banks is probably second. Then you look at these young defensive players that are going to end up having to be the air apparent to some guys that have played a lot of football. That’s what I’m looking to see over the second half of the season for the New Orleans Saints. Um, not to put everything on Pro Football Focus, but it’s a good tool that I have. And now the sample size is big enough with half the season in the rearview mirror with you’re looking at 10 games here. Okay, what do we got? And that’s what I’m looking for in the final seven games of the season for the Saints. Hey son, thanks for watching. So meet Jim Monster. The point here, okay, let’s just relax on the Gym Monster 2. The point here, ladies and gentlemen, is do you remember in the last I don’t know six months how I’ve said that a lot of the times people just look for a boogeyman when it comes to teams because if you don’t want to go through what it takes to analyze and explain and look into the context and look into the details, it’s way easier to just be like fire this person, trade this person, release this person, cut this person, sell the team. It’s way easier to do that. And finding the boogeyman, which is almost always Mickey Lis and Gail Benson, is just a shortcut and you’re not you’re kind of you’re not really doing the due diligence to figure out like what’s actually happening, what are the ins and outs, all that stuff with the team, right? And man, boy, has that come to fruition. I mean, boy oh boy, has the boogeyman metaphor that we’ve used for however many weeks, like I think everyone’s seeing exactly what I’ve been talking about for a while now. And yeah, we’re taking a victory lap for the next two weeks because it’s my channel and I’m the best in the business doing it. And y’all avid viewers of the channel are right there with me. Y’all understand ball. Y’all understand what’s going on. Nobody wants to trade Chris Lave today. Nobody wants to release Chris Ave. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we can now view this team and view this season the appropriate way. Question I get every every literally every week. James, when should we worry about Kell Moore? My answer has been 2027. You don’t even have the conversation for two years. Get his players in here, get going, get moving, whatever. I still I believe in Kell the same right now as I did week one. We did uh viewer voice messages last week. Guy asked me, “How do you feel now about Kell Moore?” And I said, “Unchanged.” Before the Carolina game. Unchanged. You talk about some brass. I’m not, you know, it’s a family channel to stare in the face of one and eight unchanged, but that’s how you got to be. That’s how you got to be in these situations. We’re evaluating, ladies and gentlemen. The house is being built. The studs are up. Okay? You know, my favorite stud finder is a mirror. The studs are up. All right. When the house is being built, there no walls, studs up, we’re not even through. We’re 10% of the way there. You don’t walk into the living room and say, “I don’t really like what they’ve done with the place.” It’s not done. I don’t really like the look of this carpet. It’s not carpet. It’s concrete. You got to wait till it’s done. We got to wait till the house is finished before we can judge the house. You can’t judge the house now. take it week by week, quarter by quarter, play by play. We go into the draft, we get that draft class, we go into the off seasonason, we hit the ground running next year. Boom. Boom. It’s a good freaking day to be a Saints fan. I’ll tell you that this is as exciting of a time to be a Saints fan as there’s been in a long time. And it has nothing to do with the win. Nothing. And if you watch this channel for a while, you know I’ve said that for the last couple of months because there’s something fun about the journey. There’s something fun about the ups and downs and growing with new players and new coaches and new schemes. Something exciting about that 100%. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. Remember, 20% off the store until kickoff at Atlanta or in the Atlanta game. Uh, we’re a week in. Merch is moving fast. Okay, I’ll tell you that right now. We’ve we’ve had dozens of sales this week. The sales going on. Get your merch now. 20% off. You don’t have to do anything. Add it. Add whatever you want to the cart. The whole thing is 20% off. Get your merch for the back half of the season. Rep it. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. I will see you in the next

The New Orleans Saints may have just RESET their entire season and in today’s video, James Skrmetta breaks down exactly why. After a much-needed win against the Carolina Panthers, the Saints head into the bye week with something they haven’t had all year… momentum. With Tyler Shough stepping in as QB1, Kellen Moore finding his rhythm as head coach, and the trade deadline officially behind us, it feels like a brand-new season for the New Orleans Saints and their fans.

James Skrmetta reacts to the Saints’ performance, explains why this win feels different, and dives into how the Saints can use the bye week to regroup, reset, and potentially make a run in the NFC. Is this Saints team finally turning the corner? Is Tyler Shough the spark this offense needed? And can Kellen Moore build on this momentum heading into the second half of the year?

If you love the Saints, NFL breakdowns, and honest fan-driven analysis, make sure to LIKE 👍, COMMENT 💬, and SUBSCRIBE 🔔 for more New Orleans Saints coverage all season long. Let’s ride into this bye week with hope.

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