Saints offense refuses to use play action like the rest of the NFL
The New Orleans Saints offense is a mystery that no one can seem to figure out, but that's not in a good way. Rather, they have plenty of talent, but there's room uch inconsistency in their success to put up points. Why is that? One major oddity in their offense is their lack of play […]
The New Orleans Saints offense is a mystery that no one can seem to figure out, but that's not in a good way. Rather, they have plenty of talent, but there's room uch inconsistency in their success to put up points. Why is that?
One major oddity in their offense is their lack of play action and motion usage. The Saints are last in play action percentage and 31st in percentage of plays in motion before/at snap.
Defenses are keying in on tendencies, and New Orleans is not throwing many curveballs at them. Pete Carmciahel Jr. has caught flak for being too bland as the play-caller, and stats like these back that concept up in a big way.
The Saints seemingly never send Rashid Shaheed or Taysom Hill in motion on passing plays. When they do, it is normally a deep shot for Derek Carr, and those have not hit very often for New Orleans.
Instead, they need to look to execute more simple play action and motion concepts.
They saw, first-hand, how useful those ideals can be against the Minnesota Vikings. Minnesota was without their top wide receiver, running back, and used a backup quarterback. Their star tight end was banged up as well. They still found plenty of success by confusing the Saints defense with hard play action and routes over the middle that had plenty of space opened up.
With their talent, New Orleans has no excuse to not have fun with their offensive structure.
According to certain analytics, they rank the Saints OC as the worst in the NFL – based on the team's constraints.
His ranking comes alongside the play callers for some of the bottom offenses in the NFL. The Saints continue to sit around league average statistically on offense, proving even further that the talent is bailing out Carmichael in some instances.
All in all, the Saints play calling and Carr must be more comfortable using play action and motion if they want to create a more difficult environment for defenses. Right now, they are back to boring, lifeless offensive football.
