There were a lot of high and low moments that went into the Saints' Thursday Night Football loss to the Jaguars in Week 7, but one in particular turned into a flashbulb play to highlight offensive dysfunction through the first half of the 2023 season.
That's just what's going to happen when the quarterback sends a pass out of bounds and comes off the field in a tirade directed at his young wide receiver.
The moment came on 3rd and 5 with 10:44 left in the 4th quarter with the Saints trailing 24-16. Second-year WR Chris Olave appeared to throttle down on what was intended to be a clearout go, and the QB airmailed the ball out of bounds for what his head coach described as a throwaway, while conceding that Olave didn't run the route correctly.
Carr admitted after the game that he needed to "chill out," after what was his second such sideline explosion in as many games, with another documented in the direction of Pete Carmichael late in a Week 6 loss to the Texans.
Naturally the play has been dissected and dissected, with WR Michael Thomas opting to weigh in, at least in part to alleviate some of the criticism on Olave, who has taken heat early in the year for inconsistent play and at times appearing to quit on routes.
Thomas confirmed that Olave wasn't an option on that play, which would appear to confirm his coach's assessment that the pass was a throwaway and not actually a miss targeting the WR.
"His job is to collision [outside] shoulder of defender," Thomas wrote. "He is never the throw, not even an alert. Only advice I would give him is to take the ball and know Taysom runs fast, so he has to run even faster to clear it out. But the progression is 7, 22, 13 eyes only went to 7."
There's a lot of helpful insight in that single tweet:
- Olave is not in the progression and not an alert, his job is to clear out the defender
- The clearout wasn't executed effectively, possibly because Olave underestimated the speed with which Taysom Hill ran his route (the first read on the play). Regardless, the clearout needs to be run full speed. It's a valid criticism and one that has persisted.
- The progression should've gone from Taysom Hill to Rashid Shaheed to Michael Thomas. Those second two options were never considered.
That final point is a key one, because for the second consecutive week it seemed that the veteran Carr saw a route being run incorrectly and responded by throwing the ball away rather than continuing on with the play. He was facing some pressure, but there appeared to be options beyond the ball landing in Ugo Amadi's hands on the sideline.
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So why didn't the progression happen? That's a question that will surely be asked in the offensive meeting room during an extended layoff before a meetup with the Colts. Again, just one play does not tell the full story of a game in which Olave was credited with 15 targets, but it continues to feed into what has been a disconcerting start for the Saints offense and the quarterback it invested in heavily. The Saints appeared to find something in its tempo package, but QBs berating WRs on the field certainly doesn't scream positivity, and neither does a WR taking to social media to -- at least somewhat -- defend one teammate at the expense of another.
"We've got to be able to be more consistent. And until we do, we're going to have a lot of the ups and downs that you've been seeing," Allen said.
One thing is for certain: The Saints have lost 4 of 5 games, and if they can't get things back on the winning track soon, things could get wose before they get better.