New Orleans Saints vs. Los Angeles Rams Preview & Prediction | PFF

New Orleans Saints vs. Los Angeles Rams Preview & Prediction | PFF

New Orleans Saints traveling to Los Angeles to take on the Rams this week. By the way, this is a fun one before I throw this one to you. We’ve talked about some uh you talked about Khil Mack specifically as being ageless and and just how great he is producing uh in the twilight of his career. Demario Davis, the inside linebacker for the New Orleans Saints, he has played the most individual run defense snaps of any player in the NFL this year at 236. Dalton, he still has an elite 90.6 PFF grade when defending the run. Just a random shout out as I was doing my research here for Deario Davis. He’s not in my analysis here of what I’m going to talk about here for this game, but I wanted to give him a shout out. He is just been phenomenal this season. He feels like he really is only getting better with age. So, shout out to Deario Davis. Do you want to talk about the Saints or do you want to talk about the Rams here? I I’ll go with the Rams offense. And look, Davis also is going to be a big factor against a Rams team that is leading the league in run blocking grade. So, he’s really going to have to be on it again this week, stopping Kron Williams and those guys. But, I think I want to talk about the return of Puka Nakua and why this is so important to the Rams offense other than the fact that he’s just really darn good at everything. It’s the fact that he’s the main guy that the Rams attack zone coverage with, which you’re going to get a lot of against this Brandon Staley defense for the Saints. They like to play too high. They like to keep things in front of them. A lot of cover two, cover six. really sitting back and making tackles in front. Not giving up those explosives. Puka Nakua 91.8 receiving grade against zone coverage this year. Best in the NFL. 18 first downs is fourth second most efficient as far as yards per route run in the NFL among wide receivers. This is the idea that man-to-man you could go to Nua or Devonte Adams or you could really, you know, Shawn McVey could scheme up some things behind the line of scrimmage with all the motions he runs. But the idea for the Rams against zone coverage is to let Puka Nakua move around the formation and pick apart the holes in zone coverages to have him back this week if he’s coming back. And it sounds like he’s they’re expecting him to. The idea for him to pick and prod away at this Saints zoneheavy defense is going to be a big factor for the Rams offense in this game. Yeah, obviously Nikkua is going to be a factor no matter what. I mean, before he got hurt, he was at an offensive player of the year type of clip. So that obviously is going to be a big deal for the Saints specifically. They’re starting Tyler Shuck in this game. Tyler Shuck is going to get his first start. Uh against the Bucks, he was 17 for 30 when he came in for Spencer Rattler. Um 128 passing yards, one interception, no touchdowns on the day. He looked fine. I think there were there were moments when I was watching him, I was like, he looks a little deer in the headlights for me. I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with this, but he settled down a little bit and was able to complete uh some nice throws. But independent of of Tyler Shuck, what really worries me about the Saints this week is their lack of run game. Especially with Kendra Miller now out for the season with an ACL injury. It’s Alvin Kamara who doesn’t look like the Alvin Kamaro that he was, you know, five, six, seven years ago, whatever that is. And I don’t know if they’re going to want to get Deon Neil involved as much as he might need to. But 42.1 rushing grade last week versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, just 48 rushing yards on 15 attempts. If they repeat that against the Rams and you make Tyler Shuck drop back and pass the ball 45, 50 times, I don’t know if you’re going to like what you’re going to see. So, a run game is a young quarterback’s best friend. And the fact of the matter is the Saints don’t have it right now. Eric McCoy out for the season. I mentioned Kendrick Miller is not there either. They just don’t have a lot that they have faith on in the run game to be able to lean on and and I think that that’s going to be a major emphasis of this team when they’re going through their team building exercises this upcoming offseason. But I don’t think it’s going to be enough in this game. I think the Rams win easy 27 to9. That’s my final score prediction here. I’m there as well. I have the Rams 31 to 10. I think this is a rough first start and a rough opponent and a rough environment for Tyler Shuck to get in in this first assignment with this pass rush. You mentioned only 15 carries for the Saints last week. Um, only nine of those were by design. Six of them were scrambles. So, they’re not they’re not going to have much success if they’re only running the ball nine times a game, especially. And Tyler Chuck has less mobility than Spencer Rattler does. They’re hoping he just makes better decisions with the football, but he’s going to be under pressure a lot. I I don’t like this matchup at all for the Saints.

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The New Orleans Saints and The Los Angeles Rams.

Get 25% off your PFF Subscription!:
Code: PFFNFLSHOW25
Link: https://go.pff.com/nflshow25

Dominate your fantasy league: http://fantasy.pff.com/
Download the PFF App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pff-fan…
Join our newsletter: https://forms.gle/maqTaBKcmdPR5Vma6
NFL/NCAA Player Grades: https://www.pff.com/grades

Thank you to our sponsors. If you’re interested in supporting our shows, please reach out to sales@pff.com