BACH
Superbowl, Homeboy!
Watched the game and was left frustrated with what I saw. Re-watched it for this purpose and was still frustrated, but a bit less frustrated. There were some good things in this game, but also a lot of the issues that we saw last year.
You cannot put too much into a week 1 game. We do not know what it will look like over the season. The Saints played well. Much, much better than I expected from them. The Superdome is always a hard place to play. Did the Cardinals need to knock off some rust after not playing in the pre-season? Was this a result of a new coaching staff having 4 months to prepare? How much did Kyler’s illness factor in the game? Or is this actually the level of play from the team? I surely hope not, but time will tell.
Overall offensive observations
Overall, the scheme was very, very close to what we saw from Petzing last year, but some minor changes.
A big change was (in retrospect not surprisingly) the use of TEs. I do not believe I have ever seen a 14 formation before in the NFL. Four tight ends on the field! Insane.
But the biggest change for me was the evolution of the TE2 position - specifically the use of Reiman. New in the scheme was Reiman lining up at TE1 with McBride playing the TE2 and quite often as a H-back role. Reiman ran routes at a much higher rate and I think the roles between Reiman and McBride will become much more fluid this season. The sack on the opening drive was a result of that. We do not not know the playcall, but it sure looks like the play was designed for Reiman to run the deep out and McBride to chip and run the quick out as a TE screen option. McBride missed the block.
We saw Higgins as a full back! So guessing that we will not only see McBride and Reiman being more interchangeable.
MHJ was used so much better than we saw last year. More motions and more plays from the slot. Very encouraged by this, because it surely looks like the Kyler-MHJ connection has improved greatly.
Which leads us directly to the biggest negative. Once the Saints took out run game, the passing game disappeared because there was zero focus or connection with any receivers not named McBride and MHJ. Part of this is on Petzing, because the other receivers are not set up properly. With the Saints stacking the box, there should be so many opportunities for quick slants for easy 8-12 yards completions. Wilson was set up nicely early. There was a slant to MHJ. But it disappeared completely late in the game.
One deep ball in the game. One 45 yard completion. So a 100% completion rate on deep balls. No more deep balls. Why?
I do not understand how Wilson is used. He is best over the middle and in the physical intermediate passing game. Was it 3 passes to the outside, where Wilson is not in position? Time to play Jones there?
But when re-watching the game, it's not just Petzing, A LOT is also on Kyler. Routes were there by design at times. Reiman was completely blank a couple of times. Jones was open a couple of times, where it could have been an easy 8 yard gain. But Kyler didn’t even look their way.
There seem to be more run options for Kyler designed. The spread-out formations all had a blocking scheme to open runways for Kyler up the middle and he took that successfully a couple of times. But he made some bad decision on his run option plays. Two plays the Saints’ DE breaks contain, but Kyler hands off. On the 1st down run at the end-zone the DE keeps contain, but Kyler then runs and is very lucky to pick up the 1st down. Just not very smart.
That was not good enough.
OL play
This was a sub-par outing from the OL. Give credit to the Saints. They played the run game very very well. On the typical Petzing designed pulls, the defense usually try to protect the outside, so the RB will not break a long run. The Saints shot the inside gaps clogging up the hole, usually stopping the runs early, but then missed it on the long Benson run. No adjustments were made in the scheme or play-calling to adjust for the run blitz.
PJJ and Froholdt played okay, but surprisingly had great Pass-pro grades, but average run block grades per pff. It’s usually the other way around for both. PJJ was the 3rd graded OT in league and he had the highest pff grade in his career.
Both guards struggled in the game. Adams graded as the worst player on the offense. Fair, but a bit misleading IMO. Adams looked overall better than Brown, but had a couple of complete misses which of course takes his grade down.I liked Adams in pass-protection. Much better than last year and it was nice to see that he was so much in control to slide down to help Williams once he secured his primary block with Froholdt.
Brown was consistently worse than Adams IMO. It’s interesting and concerning, because we saw Brown being utilized on pulls, which he hardly was last year and it didn’t look good. He completely missed his block on the inside pitch, but got lucky that Connor could bounce out of it.
Williams looked out of place in the rungame
I hope this is a case of the OL needing to get the rust knocked off, because this was not good. I expect that, because they were bad in run blocking, which should be a strength.
You cannot put too much into a week 1 game. We do not know what it will look like over the season. The Saints played well. Much, much better than I expected from them. The Superdome is always a hard place to play. Did the Cardinals need to knock off some rust after not playing in the pre-season? Was this a result of a new coaching staff having 4 months to prepare? How much did Kyler’s illness factor in the game? Or is this actually the level of play from the team? I surely hope not, but time will tell.
Overall offensive observations
Overall, the scheme was very, very close to what we saw from Petzing last year, but some minor changes.
A big change was (in retrospect not surprisingly) the use of TEs. I do not believe I have ever seen a 14 formation before in the NFL. Four tight ends on the field! Insane.
But the biggest change for me was the evolution of the TE2 position - specifically the use of Reiman. New in the scheme was Reiman lining up at TE1 with McBride playing the TE2 and quite often as a H-back role. Reiman ran routes at a much higher rate and I think the roles between Reiman and McBride will become much more fluid this season. The sack on the opening drive was a result of that. We do not not know the playcall, but it sure looks like the play was designed for Reiman to run the deep out and McBride to chip and run the quick out as a TE screen option. McBride missed the block.
We saw Higgins as a full back! So guessing that we will not only see McBride and Reiman being more interchangeable.
MHJ was used so much better than we saw last year. More motions and more plays from the slot. Very encouraged by this, because it surely looks like the Kyler-MHJ connection has improved greatly.
Which leads us directly to the biggest negative. Once the Saints took out run game, the passing game disappeared because there was zero focus or connection with any receivers not named McBride and MHJ. Part of this is on Petzing, because the other receivers are not set up properly. With the Saints stacking the box, there should be so many opportunities for quick slants for easy 8-12 yards completions. Wilson was set up nicely early. There was a slant to MHJ. But it disappeared completely late in the game.
One deep ball in the game. One 45 yard completion. So a 100% completion rate on deep balls. No more deep balls. Why?
I do not understand how Wilson is used. He is best over the middle and in the physical intermediate passing game. Was it 3 passes to the outside, where Wilson is not in position? Time to play Jones there?
But when re-watching the game, it's not just Petzing, A LOT is also on Kyler. Routes were there by design at times. Reiman was completely blank a couple of times. Jones was open a couple of times, where it could have been an easy 8 yard gain. But Kyler didn’t even look their way.
There seem to be more run options for Kyler designed. The spread-out formations all had a blocking scheme to open runways for Kyler up the middle and he took that successfully a couple of times. But he made some bad decision on his run option plays. Two plays the Saints’ DE breaks contain, but Kyler hands off. On the 1st down run at the end-zone the DE keeps contain, but Kyler then runs and is very lucky to pick up the 1st down. Just not very smart.
That was not good enough.
OL play
This was a sub-par outing from the OL. Give credit to the Saints. They played the run game very very well. On the typical Petzing designed pulls, the defense usually try to protect the outside, so the RB will not break a long run. The Saints shot the inside gaps clogging up the hole, usually stopping the runs early, but then missed it on the long Benson run. No adjustments were made in the scheme or play-calling to adjust for the run blitz.
PJJ and Froholdt played okay, but surprisingly had great Pass-pro grades, but average run block grades per pff. It’s usually the other way around for both. PJJ was the 3rd graded OT in league and he had the highest pff grade in his career.
Both guards struggled in the game. Adams graded as the worst player on the offense. Fair, but a bit misleading IMO. Adams looked overall better than Brown, but had a couple of complete misses which of course takes his grade down.I liked Adams in pass-protection. Much better than last year and it was nice to see that he was so much in control to slide down to help Williams once he secured his primary block with Froholdt.
Brown was consistently worse than Adams IMO. It’s interesting and concerning, because we saw Brown being utilized on pulls, which he hardly was last year and it didn’t look good. He completely missed his block on the inside pitch, but got lucky that Connor could bounce out of it.
Williams looked out of place in the rungame
I hope this is a case of the OL needing to get the rust knocked off, because this was not good. I expect that, because they were bad in run blocking, which should be a strength.
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