Kellen Moore on Week 1 vs. Cardinals, injuries | New Orleans Saints

Kellen Moore on Week 1 vs. Cardinals, injuries | New Orleans Saints

All right. Um, let’s just go through this. I’ll just start with like the medical aspect of this thing. Uh, the main one that came out of our game was Julian Blackman. Um, unfortunate injury, uh, shoulder, and so that will probably, um, it’ll be a long one. It’ll be a long one potentially for the full season. And so, uh, that’s that’s a tough one. Uh, obviously going through a first game of the season. There’s a lot of maintenance that will be applied uh, this week and that’s all part of the NFL process for us. And so, uh, everyone else for the most part came out of it clean. There’ll be some maintenance guys. We’ll have to see how the week progresses with those guys, but nothing nothing longterm um as that stands currently. And so, uh you know, outside that, you know, we got a chance to watch the film today. You know, it was an awesome game. It was an awesome game of, you know, ultimately we had some missed opportunities. And so, we got to play a cleaner game. We got to give oursel a chance, but uh we put oursel in a position to compete all the way to the end. Uh love the way our guys competed, played. The play style was awesome. We just got to play a smarter, cleaner game. And uh we’ll continue to grow in that aspect. It seemed that Julian played the whole game. When did that when did that come up that um yeah it it really it really wasn’t until after the game uh that it was recognized and so uh really even even after the game you know like once Julian went home and so uh bummer for him just cuz he’s done such an amazing job of coming in here and putting himself in an awesome position to have a great season and u you know he played great on Sunday as well. I had a question about a play down in the the red zone that the third and five uh from from it looked like Chris was like maybe the only guy that was like running around with you guys was that like kind of like like a sneak attack type play or like what was supposed to happen? Yeah, the goal was to to stay down there and give oursel a couple run opportunities because we were second and three at the three and um you know, obviously we lost a few yards and it was kind of a one-two play call combination and um you know, put ourselves in a little bit of a challenging spot with the negative run and um you know, it was a challenging spot and so as a result, we kind of uh you know, only had one guy left available to us and had the ability to hand the ball off or throw it and uh you know, and so it kind of turned into a tough deal there. Uh Spencer was saying that Maybe he was expecting a little bit more pressure from Arizona and they ended up playing a lot more like Shell. Is that maybe something you you facing a lot of just because of what y’all have been good at in the past with the kind of vertical game? It’s a fair assessment. I think uh week ones we we knew there was always going to be an element of unknown. They they I think they did an excellent job. They played a lot of cover too early in the in the game. Uh we recognized that they did a good job of making it earn it. We had four I think we had four 10 plus play drives. they were going to make us go the distance in some of those situations when we did have the one-on-one opportunities. We weren’t able to capitalize on those um in some situational football and so um you know it was a good experience for our guys ultimately. We weren’t able to create the explosives that you need uh in this league and we weren’t able to finish drives you know as the drives progressed. Did you just in going back and being able to watch everything find sort of a through line the pre- snap penalties and things like that? Yeah, a lot a lot of just detail and and it seemed like a lot of it was once the drive started going and and we kind of got ourselves in situations um you know, a lot of procedurals. Obviously, it’s something we put a ton of resources into this offseason and so it’s a bummer to see it come up in this game. We we’ll spend a lot of time this week really emphasizing it. I think our guys recognize that u you know if you take that element out of it uh there’s a lot of good in this game. Um but it put us in some compromised situations and so simply that that’s going to be what the results are when you when you put yourself in those situations and so uh perimeter guys, quarterback, offensive line, everyone kind of had a couple in there and so uh we got to do a better job. Does the crew call those differently? Like cuz it seems like you watch like one game it’s like Kyrie Hill looks like he’s getting like a 5 yard start and then like like seems like really tightly called in this game. The numbers would say there’s there’s sometimes some fluctuation based off game to game. Uh that’s that’s natural and that’s what’s going to happen. And so they were going to call it tight. They called it tight um you know throughout the game and so uh you know we got to play a cleaner ball though. Just clear up you said Julian was the only one who suffered like a long term. So Tie is okay. Totally. We’ll see. Uh that’ll be kind of take it through the week. Um you know there’s certainly plenty of guys that come out of a first game that you know just have that maintenance. We’ll just have to navigate this this whole week. But um you know nothing to the degree that Julian has. When was that injury first like detected? Did he keep through for a little while? Tally. Um, yeah, that’s a great question. I think just during the game and it just became a thing that just kept kind of bothering him and and ultimately we had to make the decision to to slide awesome in there and give him a chance and put us in a position there. And so it’ll, you know, Tally will have to go through this week and see how it all progresses. And with Julian, yeah, you mentioned like he he got home and then he was feeling discomfort and what he came in for this morning. What adrenaline does to you during games, I guess. So, um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes those things happen for these guys. You know, there’s a lot of juice and energy in games and you make big time plays and everyone’s sore after a football game. That’s just what happens when you’re out there. And sometimes it takes a little bit of time to realize, you know, what’s soreness and what’s an injury? And um, you know, unfortunately, this this is the way it went down for Julian. Foraga, did it like did doctors come to you and say like, “Hey, we should sit this guy or pull him up like Yeah, just during during the game, they just told me Ty was down.” So, um, yeah. Is Julie Tendry the same one he dealt with last year? Uh, I don’t have the answer for that. Uh, it’s a torn labor. It’s Yeah, it’s a shoulder deal. So, um, did you notice difference in Chris the way that like he went down like in the open field like given the injury history like did he react to things differently or I don’t think he reacted any differently. I thought he did a couple really good examples of where he caught the ball. He knows there’s a player on the inside and the outside of me and I’m trying to split guys and get vertical and get as many yards as we can. I think it’s something we talk about a lot. I thought um you know for Chris he responded really well. you know, he took he took a tremendous big hit um you know, to the chest and the way he responded, I think, you know, shows his resiliency and his toughness that u you know, he’s obviously had to deal with some of the you know, the big hit components in his career and, you know, I thought he did an awesome job and just keep fighting and keep battling and he had a few little nagging things come up throughout the game and he just kept going. How’s he doing today? Yeah. Yeah, he’s good. Yeah. Yeah, he’s fine. Um, what do you think of the with uh Julian just in terms of somebody stepping into this place and all that? Have you seen enough over training camp to kind of already know who that is or do you take that into this week’s practice? We’ll definitely have to have those conversations to put oursel in a position. We certainly feel like we have a number of guys uh you know early in this process. We’ve invested in a lot of those guys to get a ton of reps and so we feel like we’re not bringing someone in that isn’t familiar with this thing. Um, you know, we got a number of guys who can go play that and, you know, that’s a conversation that we’ll have to have tomorrow just to narrow our focus and and put someone in a position or a combination of a couple guys, put them in position to be ready for Sunday. And does that how is that influenced at all by what the opponent does or do you focus more on the person that fits what you want to do? I I think yeah, we got to focus on oursel. Uh certainly there’s times where, you know, it becomes relevant for the opponent, but uh with Julian being gone for, you know, essentially probably the year, um we got we got to get these guys ready to go and, you know, create some continuity for him. Yiann playing in base, was that related to Alante being limited throughout the week? I mean, I think I done an awesome job. I think he’s he’s earned it. U you know, as far as Alante, I mean, he just came back this week really with from a practice perspective and so he really had one full week. We left him inside at the uh nickelstar position and you know I thought he did an awesome job. I thought Alante played a really really good game. Is there anything like kind of put his guys in a good spot to like highlight his playmakers? Like I don’t know that’s like kind of a big It just seems like there’s a lot of guys that like flash and are in position to really make plays. Thought Brandon called a really good game. I thought he gave us a chance. Um thought the timing of when he called u you know pressures was really well calculated. the right timing um protected us in some situations that we got a little bit stressed and and were able to kind of hold hold it um hold on and you know maybe force a field goal or whatever it may be and so thought our defense did a really good job that second quarter felt like there was a lot of extended drives and a lot of that came down to these third and extra longs that we weren’t able to to uh you know take advantage of but uh you know they extended drives and they were able to kind of hold on to it for a while there. I was going to ask about the defense side of the like sto a good way or Yeah, I I thought the play style, the way we pursued the football, the run game, you know, there was a really they did an excellent job against the run game. Ultimately, they had one really big run and you don’t get to take that one away. So, that one counts for every yard that it got. Grando did great job pursuing that. He he tackles the guy and, you know, saves us four points, you know, and I think that shows the effort that our guys are playing with. And, uh, now we just need to clean up. We have some third and extra longs that we have. Great. We’re in great position to just, you know, get them out off the field and we weren’t able to convert. What went into Brock? Yeah, just a rotation thing. You know, obviously we love Vernon. He did an awesome job during training camp. You know, only get, you know, we only usually have five guys in that position. And so, uh, you know, felt like Jonah with his versatility and being able to line up in a couple other spots as we as kind of a backs stop to a number of those guys that I did really well. B Bowl Bullard was available to us as well to be a heavy inside guy to kind of play the run game. And so, uh, yeah, we’ll just see how all that stuff plays out. I know you got asked a number of times about those timeouts before halftime last night, but but just one followup because it it threw so many people off to to see it approach that way. What would be a benefit to not using that like minute tag? Yeah. No, I we we definitely had the conversation on the headset. I was close to calling one and uh, you know, as we as we kind of navigate it, they still had three timeouts. felt like we were we were in a good position to get the ball in the second half. Um you I could see us calling timeouts in those scenarios too. It was just kind of a anticipating uh getting the ball back, see if we can bleed, stuff them down the red zone, force a force a field goal, and then uh you know, it gave us a little bit of time to kind of see what happens. We did have the three timeouts, but they had three, you know, and they had three and so they could they could easily get the ball and flip it back around if we if we had done that. You would control when the half ended basically that way. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, I I can easily see us calling timeouts in those situations, too, in other games. And so, you know, it’s a it’s a situation that’s very fair to evaluate it that way. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Um, you certainly could use timeouts there. And so, uh, you know, we’ll we’ll see how next if you went three and out, you want to leave. Yeah. Yeah. we get the ball in the second half and they had all three and you know felt like we were close down there and so when um you reviewed it this morning you feel good about the process that went into it like you want to change game wise yeah or just like with the the timeout specifically but it could be game anything yeah I I feel like our operation was pretty clean we gave oursel a chance at the end put oursel in position uh we kept it kind of you know we need to convert a little cleaner in the red zone on offense uh we need to convert some more third downs we need to put oursel in better third downs felt like our defense did a really good job. I thought teams wise we did some really good things. Thought Kai did an awesome job punting the football. Um you know flipping the field a couple times, pinning them back. Uh we were able to keep it in that one score game margin for the most part there and u ultimately gave ourselves a chance at the end and we felt like that those guys play a bunch of games like that. Uh Jonathan does an awesome job just managing the game for those guys and uh they seem to play those tight games every single week, you know, going back to last year and so uh you know, we had our chances. Devon Daily snap count. How much of that was him just still getting here, still getting up to speed, or is that just kind of maybe how it’s going to be for him guys today? It it’s really just him getting here. Uh you know, obviously we’re we’re acclimating him. we did get into some more a little bit pass heavy, you know, towards the end or at least, you know, tempo offense just because we we got to that two down two scores and so we were playing a little bit faster and so less substitution, more just play on the ball and so uh kind of kept those other three in a little bit more in those situations. Arizona didn’t necessarily blitz maybe as much as we thought that they would, but when you watched sort of Spencer handling the blitz, like what stood out to you in in that area of his opponent? Thought he did a good job of understanding when he was stressed. um and making really good decisions with the football in those situations. I thought our O line did a really good job protecting you know uh you know to throw it I think we were through 46 47 times somewhere right around there one sack. Um you I felt like those guys did some did some really good things in the pass protection game and so um you obviously it’s a good battle for us. You know certainly we want a little bit more balance in in normal situations, normal flow. We’d love to get a little bit more of the run game alive in those, but again, when you get the penalties and you get the negative situations there, you put yourself behind the sticks and you got to kind of catch up. You watch miss that. Yeah. Yeah. I I I don’t have the full conclusion there. Uh but, uh, you know, it was it was just a missed opportunity there. And so, uh, we’ll work on that routine. When you all have so many pre- snap penalties, especially after the emphasis you put on it in the off season about the fundamentals and technique, what can you do during the week other than emphasizing it verbally? What can you do to fix that for next week? Yeah, we’re going to put together a really good plan over the next day as far as just everything that we can as far as officiating it throughout the week, being really nitpicky about it. We’ve we’ve certainly spent a lot of resources between team meetings. Even this past week, we knew that game was going to be officiated really tight from the line of scrimmage. That’s just the way we anticipated it going. And u we just got to be cleaner. We got to be more uh precise with things. Uh our guys got to understand their responsibilities so that we’re not put in those situations where we’re we’re uh you know, maybe not organized as well as we should be in those tempo situations. How do you work on something you don’t want to show anyone like a training camp, i.e. maybe like the touch push? Like when are you guys like working on that play? It’s just yeah, we’ve been working on it throughout the, you know, offseason. So, just little bits and pieces and, you know, that’s there’s a lot of situational football stuff that obviously you’re not going to do during training camp and or preseason games, I should say, and you’re going to, you know, try and find different opportunities to work it. You said officiate it with a pre- snap stuff. Do you literally bring in officials or do you just do that internally? We’ll look at what the best options are. You know, certainly it’s something we’ve we’ve discussed and we’ll just we’ll see what’s available to us this week, but it’ll be a big emphasis for us. Do you think the tempo at all contributed to some of the pre- snap? I think like three of the seven offenses were very no huddle. Yeah, there were some no huddle sequences. We just got to be cleaner. Uh we got to be cleaner. We got to line up uh be more precise. We got communicate at a higher level. And so uh you know, because the tempo gave us some some advantages in some situations, we felt like it was really positive for us. But we got to play cleaner football in there. All right. Thanks, guys.

New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore speaks with the media from the Ochsner Sports Performance Center on Monday, September 8, 2025 the day after the Saints’ Week 1 game against the Arizona Cardinals and ahead of Week 2 against the San Francisco 49ers.
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