Atlanta Falcons vs. New Orleans Saints Review | PFF Grade Release Show

PFF is running one of their biggest sales ever. 40% off a PFF plus subscription right now using the promo code black Friday. That means that you get everything fully unlocked. You get the grades, you get the stats, you get all the fantasy advice, the betting advice, which our new player prop tool is available on web as well to make you a smarter better. You’ve got all the draft analysis, the free agency analysis, all of that great stuff. Subscribe.pff.com to get 40% off a year-long PFF plus subscription. Get it now. Falcons and the Saints NFC divisional matchup here. Atlanta wins this one 24 to 10. I told you. I told you that was going to happen. You didn’t listen to me. I told you a lot of No, you didn’t listen to me. I tell you other things and you don’t listen. Yeah. Good. Um, Atlanta’s side of things. Offensive guard Chris Lstrom at the top of their list as uh they often are. 85.9. Edge rusher Arnold Lucetti with a 80.7. Linebacker Davine Diablo with a 795. Defensive tackle Brandon Norless a 767 and then safety Jesse Bates a 76. Kirk Cousins an 83.3 in this game. Love to see that from Kirk. Well, Saints fans don’t of course. On New Orleans side of things, their linebacker Deario Davis with an 82.0. Edge rusher Cam Jordan a 74.6. Wait a second. Dear Mario Davis and Cam Jordan have one and two. What year is this? Offensive tackle Kevin Banks Jr. with a 745. Wide receiver Chris Olive a 70.8. And then edge rusher Chase Young a 70.8 as well. Tyler Shuck in this game. his first home game as the starter for the Saints. 49.5 uh staff that told the story do yeah to me just going through this game watching both sides of the ball the Falcons were the better team in the trenches and when you get kind of an ugly physical game where both teams have shaky quarterback situations that makes a big difference right you saw Chris Lindstöm at the top there for the Falcons defensive line played really well I thought both sides of the ball that was just really the big difference Atlanta’s offensive line grade an 80 New Orleans a 64 defensive line grades a 68 for Atlanta New Orleans just a 59 a lot better pass rushes The Falcons got Cousins was pressured on just eight of his 28 drop backs. Shuck pressured on 21 out of 52. Now, both of those numbers are too high. You don’t want Tyler Shuck dropping back 50 times, but also under pressure about 40% of the time. So, to me, I just watching this game, the Falcons just had a better control of the pace of it. More balanced on offense. You’re going to get into that side. And then I I think the Saints defensively, the edge players played well. You saw Jordan and Chase Young there. But the interior, it’s that defensive tackle group that struggled for several years now that really got beat up in this game by Atlanta’s offensive line. Yeah. And and on the Saints side of things, ju just no run game for them right now. I mean, Avocamara is even when he’s out there, he’s he’s just showing his age at this point. And um he goes out with I believe it was a knee injury um that he suffered in this game. Didn’t come back and and Deon Neil took over. But even with Deon Neil, 2.6 six average yards per carry, which is best on the team. And it’s just that’s not going to work out for you. I know we were joking around a little bit before when we were kind of talking about JJ McCarthy situation with the Minnesota Vikings, but you got to have some semblance of a run game. If you got a young quarterback, they’ve got to be able to lean on it. They’ve got to have faith in it. And uh the Saints just absolutely did not. And credit to that young group of uh defensive guys on the Falcon side of things. They played really well. Brandon Doris, Jaylen Walker, James Pierce Jr., uh Arnold Betti, uh Xavier Watts, like those guys were awesome in this game and they really came together and played well. And it’s sort of like we’ve talked about with Atlanta all year long. There’s going to be games where they look great. When the young guys all bring it together and they’re all playing cohesively, you feel good about where this team is going. And there’s also going to be grades where they look like a group of young defensive players and they’re not going to play so well. And so this was one of those games that was a good game for them. And it’s really nice to see them go on the road and be able to play well as a group. But I think that run defense was a big area that they emphasized in this game. They said, “Hey, we’re going to stop the run and we’re going to make Tyler Shuck beat us.” And we feel pretty good about that, especially if he’s going to attack our safeties in Jesse Bates and Xavier Watts. So, I thought it was the right game plan for uh for the defense in in Atlanta, and I thought they played very well. I also thought that Kirk Cousins played pretty well in this game. 16 for 23, 199 passing yards. He had that 50-yard touchdown bomb to Darnell Mooney. I didn’t know he still had that in him with his arm. No Drake London in this game, but uh I thought that he was I thought he was fantastic. 94.1 play action passing grade, 93.1 passing grade versus the Blitz. Uh Kurt Cousins, the version of Kurt Cousins that you’re going to get here in 2025. Of those versions, this was probably the best case scenario. So, I thought he played really good here. No, he did. And they were under center a little bit more. Using the play action game, like you mentioned, was big time. I want to throw something in there about the Saints run game. They have been under 90 rushing yards now in six of their last seven games. Yeah, I believe it. I mean that you just can’t get by, especially with young quarterbacks playing for you, whether it’s Rattler or Tyler Shuck, you have to be able to run the football better and that offensive line has got to get a better push. My my most impressive is the Falcons pass rush. When you look at just the number of contributors they had, Arnold Ebetti had six pressures. James Pierce Jr., five pressures, two sacks. Brandon Doris, five pressures and a sack. Leonard Floyd, four pressures. And the funny thing about this game, for me, from Jeff Ober’s point of view, coming into this game, they had the second highest pass blitz rate in the league, this was by far their lowest blitz rate of the season. The Falcons only 20% of the time when they were hovering up in the mid-40s for most of their games this season. So, kind of dialed it back and let the front four do the work and have more faith in those young guys. Absolutely. And they should, right? Pierce has been good. Doris, you mentioned Jaylen Walker as well, a little quieter in this game when it comes to the pass rush. only one pressure, but he graded well overall. Absolutely. He’s been a very probably a better run defender early on than we thought he would be here. But the number of contributors they’re getting in this pass rush, they set out this off season to fix that. They certainly have done that. I this pass rush has been really good and getting a more aggressive defensive coordinator and Jeff Brook has helped too, but he laid off the gas a little bit and his front four dominated this game. Uh most disappointing for me was Kyle Pitts. He had the drop in this game, only two catches, five targets. It’s just, you know, when Drake London’s out of this lineup, you figure that Pitts is supposed to be the guy who’s who you want to step up. And I think we’re far enough removed now from the draft to to be like, oh, you know, he was the number four overall pick for you. It’s like he’s he’s just he’s not that player. And even here in 2025, you have an opportunity to really step up with Drake London out. This should be your time to shine. And um it’s not. And that’s just really disappointing from a talented player that uh um just it feels like leaves a lot of meat on the bone from what we saw at Florida and his potential there. So that was my most disappointing. Uh anything else in this one before we move on? Nope.

PFF’s Trevor Sikkema and Dalton Wasserman review the matchup between The Atlanta Falcons and The New Orleans Saints.

Get 40% off your PFF Subscription with our Black Friday sale!:
Code: BLACKFRIDAY
Link: https://subscribe.pff.com

🏆 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

3 comments
Leave a Reply