This week, the better name for this piece would probably just be “Downs and downs”, as we saw the New Orleans Saints get completely crushed their second preseason outing, losing 34-0 to the Los Angeles Rams. It was bad football all around, but hey, maybe it wasn’t all bad?
Up: P Ryan Wright
Punter Ryan Wright had a better day on Saturday than his first preseason outing, punting four times for an average of 45 yards per punt, including a 58-yarder.
More importantly, Wright didn’t have a shanked punt as he did in the
team’s first preseason outing against the Jacksonville Jaguars. A mistake so bad you question a bit why New Orleans gave the veteran such a big payday. Despite this, Wright was solid on the day.
Up: RB Kendre Miller
Can I be honest with you? I’m a Kendre Miller guy. I think he can be a starting running back in this league if he ever figures out how to stay healthy, so as long as he finished this game, he was always going to end up as an “up” for this game.
But Miller was impressive in the loss. The numbers don’t show it, with the fourth-year running back logging just 22 yards on six carries. But plenty of strong plays made by Miller were nullified by penalties (more on that later).
Miller becomes even more of an up when you look at the injury second-year running back Devin Neal suffered. Neal, who was an iron man in college, has also dealt with a plethora of injuries since the Saints drafted him. With Neal going down and the Saints removing Miller from the game midway through the third quarter, it sure seems Kellen Moore is looking to keep his young running back healthy for the season, presumably to take over RB2 while Alvin Kamara recovers from injury. Wow, that’s a lot of injury talk.
Down: Penalties
There are too many downs to highlight today, so I’ll mostly focus on the ones that concern me for the regular season. There’s a clear standout from Saturday’s loss, and that’s the sheer amount of penalties.
New Orleans was flagged 12 times in the loss for 96 yards worth of penalties. Preseason football won’t be clean. There will be mistakes, there will be turnovers, but what you don’t want to see is an undisciplined team. 12 penalties will lose any team a game, and that form of undisciplined football doesn’t come just from the reserves; that’s sure to stick its head into the starters in the regular season as well.
The Saints weren’t clean against the Jaguars either. They were flagged eight times for 66 yards. They are now averaging 10 penalties per game which is absolutely unacceptable and needs to be cleaned up.
Down: QB2
There wasn’t really a QB2 battle going into the preseason. Spencer Rattler was the team’s Week 1 starter last season and looked to resume his role as Tyler Shough’s backup going into Week 1 of this season. But that all changed after Zach Wilson lit up the stat sheet in the team’s initial preseason appearance.
Wilson pushed the ball down the field and, despite a loss, looked like he could be the favorite to be the team’s QB2. That couldn’t have been more the opposite of what happened on Saturday, however. Wilson was more indecisive, antsy in the pocket, and flat-out inaccurate. Wilson finished the day completing 6-out-of-12 of his pass attempts for 55 yards and an interception.
Spencer Rattler was truthfully the better quarterback, especially in his opening drive, but as the game went on, he was quite unimpressive as well. The third-year passer finished the day completing 14-of-his-23 pass attempts for 141 yards and a pick-six.
The team needs a solid backup behind Shough and has yet to find that. There is a lack of consistency and too many mistakes. If neither passer can have a solid outing against the Dallas Cowboys to close out the preseason, New Orleans may need to look towards veterans to back up their young quarterback.
