REACTION: Chargers 27 Saints 13 | New Orleans Offensive Line MUST IMPROVE!!

REACTION: Chargers 27 Saints 13 | New Orleans Offensive Line MUST IMPROVE!!

All right, so the Saints go down to the Chargers 27-13 in the preeason. Score doesn’t really matter. If you win or lose a preseason game, doesn’t really matter. It’s about watching the tape and seeing how the performances ended up. It’s about seeing some things like was it clean football? Did you have turnovers? Did you protect the quarterback? Did we protect the quarterback? No, that did not happen. Uh, my biggest takeaway from the Saints preseason game, the Saints offensive line, and now with Trevor Penning leaving the game, Will Clap leaving the game, I mean, you’re down a couple of bodies. But the Saints had their one offensive line out there against Charger backups and could not block them. That is troublesome. That makes you worry. Um, I mean, you like I said, you had multiple parts of your first offensive line out there. Um, and they were losing the Chargers fullback, their starting fullback who like dabbles in playing defensive line was beating some of your first team offensive line. That’s a problem. And are we talking pass pro, run blocking? What are we talking? I saw the pass blocking. You can pick your poison. You can better judge the run blocking because you’ve read run blocking for your entire career. Um pass blocking, it just seemed like there was one loose end a lot of times. Um but that’s all it really takes, right? I mean, no question about it. We’ll get to the run game. Uh if we can start with the pass protection, that’s fine. Uh Caesar Ruiz, who’s a first round pick, Jacqueline Hyde has had some moments, but like he got beat in a way, Matt, that you see undrafted free agents get beat. And I don’t try like I’m not trying to be disrespectful to undrafted free agents, but when you get in there for the first time, it’s going real fast. You forget all your technique. You kind of step on your own toes a little bit. And when I see a guy who is a veteran player in this league, who is a first round pick do that, like that’s troublesome to me. It’s like he has got to be more consistent. This was the third, fourth play of the game. And Spencer Rattler is having to immediately leave the pocket because his first round starting guard is getting beat by a backup. Now, a good defense. Chargers, I think, were what were they top in scoring defense, I think, a year ago. But it’s a backup on that team. And your guy throwing a lookout block the third play of a preseason game. You can say it’s one play, sure, but it it wasn’t the only the only play. I mean, you get a gift, the Chargers muff a punt, you get the ball back there, and on, you know, one of the biggest I think it was third down, Spencer Rattler doesn’t even have the ball in his hands yet, and he’s getting pressure from the right guard immediately, right? And so like those are things that it’s hard to judge a quarterback. Now Spencer ended up running down to the one yard line and making a positive play out of it, but it’s hard to judge quarterbacks when you have pressure immediately. Certainly interior pressure immediately. Yeah. Um uh yeah, watching the game, um that is the number one thing that stuck out to me was the pass protection wos with the with the starting unit. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna take a deep dive into quarters one, two, three, and four on pass, but it was immediately with more starters against backups. Um, and from all the talk through offseason, leading up to training camp, and up to this point through training camp, most of the talk, 98% of it’s been about the quarterbacks. Um, been a little bit about the receivers, what we’re doing on defense, Tyra Matthew, the safety position. Uh, and most of we’ve kind of skipped past and overlooked the offensive line because all reports said looking pretty good. They’re dominating. There’s some good clips coming out and we were hoping that that was the one position that we could at least count on to be serviceable, be good because of the draft stock, the draft capital they have in it. The least amount of like I guess question marks about who’s going to be there at least. Maybe maybe it’s not the right fit. Maybe they haven’t really shown what they should have, but like from a personnel standpoint, the least amount of question marks of like we got guys here, they should be good. Yeah. Um I It’s a position that we’re like, “Okay, right. All right. You feel pretty good about it.” But for a preseason game, an absolute running game that was abysmal. Yes. It was blocked awfully. Um, and we were just talking about like the running backs like he he had to ch shot shot the show out early, but like 90s Emit Smith wasn’t making any yards in that game, right? That’s a that’s a very tough game to evaluate the running back position because when you go and you look at it and we’ll just pull up the box score, you had Kre Miller six for 15 yards, 2.5 yards per carry. Cam Acres four for nine, 2.3 yards per carry. Clyde Edward layer, four carries, six yards, 1.5 yards per carry. You had Jones Jr. who had one carry for negative one yards. All right, there was nothing there. And I went back and I was kind of looking at some of the tape this morning and I don’t know, and you said it too. I don’t know where to tell the running back to run. So like the problem coming in here on a Monday morning, it’s not that the Saints lost a preseason game. You can go 0 and4 in the preseason, make the playoffs. It happens all the time. It’s when you watch the tape and the positions that you actually felt good about in camp were getting beat consistently in both things they do. Yep. Protecting the quarterback and opening up lanes for the running back. Like when you actually kind of look at the quarterback play, there was some encouraging things. Let me tell you something. Quarterback. This is based on one game. Quarterback will not be the issue for the New Orleans Saints in 2025. Not saying they’re going to be all pros. Not saying they’re going to be top 10 or top 15, but they are not going to be the problem for this team. The problem is going to be the surrounding pieces around it, defense. But that offensive line, it has got a lot of work to do. And it’s not just like mental errors. Yeah. We’re talking about physically being just beat. Yeah. Not maybe not outstrengthened, but like the technique, the footwork, like everything. It’s just they got beat in all ways. It was weird. It was It was so weird to see a player again, not just trying to pick on Caesar Ruiz, but he’s he’s the guy that stood out to me. And also like he’s just been he’s been inconsistent. Like the highs are high, but man, the lows are low. And when I say stepping on his own feet, like when you play offensive line, really at any level, but certainly in the National Football League, like there is a process of going through your technique and if you don’t do it, you’ll get beat by anybody. We always joke like that guy’s going to be an Uber driver. Uber drivers are still really good football players when they’re in the preseason. And like he never even like had a kickstep. Mhm. It was like he was like high school Harry like let me just turn and try to pass protect you. Like it it blew my mind watching it on tape and I kind of went back like injured. Well, I thought I thought maybe he got stepped on by somebody, you know, and like he couldn’t get his No, no. Nope. It was just bad technique. And so like that was a unit and again it it is one game, but the thing that worries you is the Chargers didn’t have Khil Mack out there. You know what I’m saying? like the Chargers didn’t have their ones out there rushing you. It was guys that are going to play for the Chargers. They’re backups in a unit that you thought, “Okay, look, whichever young quarterback comes in there, they’re going to protect him.” All right. Whichever running back ends up being behind AK, you know, they’re going to be able to to be successful. Like I thought Kendra Miller actually like there was a couple of moves that he made that almost texted the group like, “Okay, I get why he’s getting second and third chances, right? Because he’s sudden. Yep. I’m like, “Okay, but it doesn’t really matter how sudden you are.” He suddenly got hit right in the face. Exactly. He would make two guys miss like, “Oh, but you know what? There’s another blunt guy. There’s another one.” Like that. And I my my hope is if I’m trying to be glass half full about anything, maybe once they’re they’re tight ends like maybe maybe you know because Foster Morrow is obviously somebody that helps him in the run game like maybe when he get like Jawan Johnson is a converted receiver so like maybe the top like maybe maybe that helps you a little Foster’s going to help him go that kickstep but my Yeah, he that’s true but my gosh I mean let me maybe the Chargers are like the 85 Bears. Uh, look, they they are like they really were. I mean, they led the league in scoring defense, but if they weren’t one, they were like top three, but it wasn’t it wasn’t their guys. Like, you didn’t have Derwin James wasn’t out there. If there’s ever like a show that talks about sports that is not going to overreact to preseason games, it would be our show. And we’re not going to overreact to them looking bad or playing bad or certainly not losing. Like, who cares about what the score says at the end of the day in preseason? But when you make simple errors and you’re getting beat one-on-one and your footwear looks bad and you just look like the other people are better football players than you on multiple plays like offensive line like you’re going to win some, you’re going to lose some. That is a defensive lineman. That’s an offensive line. That is the life of a lineman especially in the running game. Like you’re going to win some, you’re going to lose some. Um in passing game you’re going to win as offensive lineman. you’re going to win the majority. You can win 99% of them and still be a bad offensive lineman, right? Um that’s just the life that that it is. But you can’t get beat every time, right? And we’re not saying they got beat every time, but it certainly looked like it because we couldn’t run the ball. Um and we’re I’m talking more the first half. Spentler had Spencer had pressure on him the entire time. So like the the biggest question mark has been the quarterback. Everybody’s been worried about it. We’ll talk about that more in segments to come about their actual play. But I can tell you from what we saw in one game, and this is not an overreaction. This is just stating what we saw yet based on yesterday is at quarterback we will not be the issue this year if there is an issue to be had. I am. O man, I am looking at some of the Pro Football focused grades of this game. Oh my gosh, the guys towards the bottom. I mean, Caesar Ruiz 51%, Jawan Johnson 51%. Like, when you look at pass blocking grades, it’s just, man, it is not only one way to go. Only one way to go, Saints fans, your starting your starting right guard, your starting right guard, who’s a first round pick that you’re going to be counting on, graded out at 34% pass blocking grade yesterday. Like those are the things that when you when you watch it, they showed and look like I just I wanted to see the grades just to make sure that my eyes were telling me the same story. And if the Saints are going to be successful offensively, and we’ll get to the defense later on, there was actually some really good things with some of the defensive unit, but the if the Saints are going to have any hope to do anything, even in the South, a division that has been down, the offensive line has to be the unit that you count on every single game because you’ve got four first round picks and a second round pick. Find me another team across the league that in a position group, any position group, has four first rounders in a second rounder and the second rounder is actually the best of the group. Like, go find me that. You won’t. It doesn’t exist. You have so much draft capital tied into that one position. That position group for what you’ve spent on it needs to be elite. They weren’t good yesterday. They were, in fact, they were bad together. McFro actually played pretty well at right tackle. Okay. You know, Banks is somebody that’s, you know, a rookie and he he held his own a little bit there. But as a unit, it’s got to go way up if the Saints want to have any kind of a season that they can be proud of because yesterday’s performance from a group that you’re counting on was so much put into it and building it. If it plays like that in a you’ll be going to Pittsburgh next year and the commissioner is gonna say with the first overall pick the New Orleans Saints select. Um with a unit, an offensive unit that has two wide receivers that anyone in the country’s ever heard of. Uh two quarterbacks that are a fifth round pick last year, second round pick rookie. Um no veteran quarterbacks. um running backs that are uh established but older, getting a little bit older. Um the group that we’re talking about on the lead of this show for 15 minutes is about the poor play of the one group that has got four first rounders in a second. Yeah, that’s not good. You have to have them step up. They got to be the anchor of this team. They got a lot to improve on. And like look, the talent’s clearly there. or they wouldn’t have have the draft stock that they did. They just have to figure it out. They got to figure out how to be pros. Yeah. And I’m not I’m not talking about all of them, but just from you got to do your job. Four people can’t be great and one person not yet. They got to work as a unit. Have to non-negotiable. When you play the offensive line in the National Football League, you have to all be working. It’s what makes football the greatest sport in the world. You can have 10 guys doing the thing that they’re supposed to be doing at an elite level and one guy can be, you know, using poor technique or be not there mentally and not have one step here, one step there. Maybe he, you know, supposed to go inside shoulder, he goes outside shoulder. And you know what? Those 10 guys doing that elite thing, it does not matter. The play is going to be blown up in the back field. That’s what makes it the ultimate team sport and the greatest sport we have. It has to be 11 people in unison. And yesterday, it was not that. It was not that and then some. And so, guess what though, was another game this week. I And and look, they might so depending on on their health, Kell Moore said after the game, they might practice with the Rams this week because the Chargers were supposed to practice with the Rams and the Chargers a little banged up in camp and they they’re they decided not to. the Saints actually the Rams reached out to them and and said, “Hey, would y’all since y’all out here, would y’all want to practice with us?” Those joint practices would benefit the Saints offensive line so much because that Rams defensive line is got dogs, three or four of them. You, if I’m Moore, you got to weigh this. All right. What kind of practices do you want to have, Sean McVey? Like, what? because I want to go full pads four times this week and I want to run live running drills and I want my offensive lineman to work. So if the Rams aren’t don’t want to do that, if I’m Kell Moore, that’s what I want to do. I want to go nine on seven, I want my offensive line, I want to kick their ass this week. Yeah, right. I want to make them get low, make them do the footwork stuff. Yeah. So if the Rams don’t want to do those things, that’s you got to kind of weigh what type of practice you want to do. But I agree with you. If you have those types of practices with another team, it would benefit them tremendously. Uh especially with one that has the Rams defensive line. I mean, Braden Fisk, you’ve got uh Kobe Turner, Byron Young, you got Jared Verse is obviously on on that team. I mean, you have some some really good players that can really get after any offensive line. I mean, Jar Vers, was he not defensive rookie of the year last year on the That’s what I thought. And I mean, Fisk and those Florida State guys, we know them well, play against LSU, they were in the back field as well. Um, really good players. I still think it’s funny that when you look at the Rams defensive depth chart, you see Omar Spates starting in the NFL. Madhouse. I knew Omar was a great player. I watched him at Oregon State. I was so excited when he got here. Everybody was calling him Slowar Spates for his play at LSU. No, turned out it was just Madhouse. Turned out it was just Mad House. guys starting in the NFL as an undrafted free agent.

On Off The Bench, Jacob Hester and Matt Flynn recap the Saints-Chargers game and express their concerns on the New Orleans offensive line.

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