The New Orleans Saints have had their fair share of struggles stopping the Philadelphia Eagles over the past few years, and there's been one major difficulty: Stopping the QB run.
That's largely been driven by Jalen Hurts, who is 2-0 in his career against the Saints -- albeit in games started by Taysom Hill and Trevor Siemian -- while New Orleans did win in 2022 with Hurts out with an injury.
The Saints have made some tweaks on defense, but success in Week 3 will likely come down to how they handle that part of the game, at least on defense.
“It’s really, not allow him to break the pocket, making him stay in the pocket. I mean, you’ve got to have, we’ve talked constantly about having lane integrity … when you are chasing a quarterback, you’ve got to have a plan, and that’s the biggest thing," McAllister said this week on WWL. "Jalen Hurts has hurt us in the past as a runner and, you know, you can talk about team speed or this guy should be able to handle it. Until I see it and I see you with your gameplan and you can consistently do it, he’s always gonna be a little iffy and scary to me."
In those two games against the Saints Hurts has been pedestrian as a passer, completing 55% (30-54) for 314 yards and a touchdown, but it's the 175 rushing yards and three more touchdowns on the ground that really make it difficult to win.
Related
The Saints will also have to contend with new Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, whom they've had up and down results against. Barkley had 126 total yards and a pair of scores during an OT Giants win against the Saints in 2021, but they bottled him up completely in 2023 to the tune of just 37 total yards on 11 touches. Barkley has flashed his potential behind a strong Eagles offensive line with 204 rushing yards and a pair of scores on 46 carries to go with another 44 receiving yards and a touchdown on six catches. He did, however, have a key drop late in Week 2 that cost the Eagles a shot to run out the clock in what turned into a stunning, last-minute loss against the Falcons.
With star receiver A.J. Brown out for Philadelphia, shutting down Saquon and Hurts in the run game would create major problems for the Eagles' chances.
Not having A.J. Brown as a receiver, it changes so much for them," McAllister continues. "The Saints can say, Marshon [Lattimore], go take Devonta [Smith] away, everybody else, let me see what you’ve got. He’s gonna be man-to-man with him. If he can eliminate him, where do you go with the football?"
MORE FROM DEUCE
On the Eagles defense
"You look at the last two weeks, the numbers, they’re not very good. Now, the other part of it is you’ve got a lot of talent on that defense and I don’t know if you're getting a lot of effort on that defense. ... Some of those guys on defense are playing selfish. I’m not gonna name them but they’re … playing selfish on that defense right now. That’s what’s going on. So I’m interested to see what tweaks they have defensively, though, because like you talked about, coach Vic [Fangio], he has a certain style or a certain defense that he likes to play, but he’s not getting success and they haven’t, we’re only talking still two weeks, of film, but it hasn’t been very good."
On facing a stout Eagles OL
“Saints defensive line I would carry and extra guy, and you’re gonna find out a lot about the Saints defensive line this week."
The Saints (2-0) and Eagles (1-1) kick off at noon Sunday from the Caesars Superdome. Catch all the action on WWL and Audacy.