Stock up, stock down in Saints loss to Steelers: Failing in the trenches

The New Orleans Saints dropped a close game, 16-10, to the Steelers in Paris, but the results left success feeling a long way off.

Scroll below for our stock up and stock down players after Week 7.

STOCK DOWN

THE RUN GAME

The NFL is a week to week league, and nowhere has that been more clear than with the Saints run game over the past 7 days.
Seven days ago in New York the Saints had their most productive rushing game of the season with 175 yards on 38 carries. They OL was getting push. They found six explosive runs.

A week and roughly 3600 miles later the Saints run game found nothing but a brick wall. 17 carries for 18 yards, and it’s even worse if you only look at the carries by running backs. Here’s a breakdown:

- Q1, 1st & 10: Kamara left guard, +3
- Q1, 2nd & 10: Kamara middle, +3
Q1, 2st & 10: Kamara left guard, no gain
- Q2, 1st & 10: Miller middle, +2
- Q2, 1st & 10: Miller left tackle, +1
- Q2, 2nd & 6: Kamara middle, +1
- Q2, 3rd & 1: Miller right tackle, no gain
- Q3, 1st & 10: Miller left guard, -1
- Q3, 2nd & 6: Miller left tackle, +1
- Q3, 2nd & 4: Miller left guard, -1
- Q3, 1st & 10: Kamara mildde, +3
- Q4, 2nd & 2: Miller right tackle, +3
- Q4, 2nd & 1: Miller left tackle, +1
- Q4, 2nd & 5: Kamara middle, -5

Yea, not good. The Saints had as many runs for zero or fewer yards than they had for more than 1 yard. More concerning, in my opinion, this is what Erik McCoy said when I asked if it was more about planning or execution.

“They brought some stuff. They pressured more than they have all season. ... I think they had some good scheme stuff called at the right time to our tendencies, so shout out to them on that.”

There’s a lot of jargon in there that we don’t necessarily need to dive into to understand the point: The Steelers outschemed the Saints. Plain and simple.

Pittsburgh attacked the Saints’ tendencies in ways the Saitns weren’t prepared for. The Saints didn’t have answers. The results were clear enough even without that insight.

There’s obviously an element of execution involved here, too. The best plan in the world doesn’t matter if you make mistakes or don’t get into the right looks. But far too often it seems like the Saints offense doesn’t enter games with the answers it needs to succeed. And even less so does it seem capable of finding those answers on the fly.

The solution far too often seems to be: OK, Tyler Shough, put on your cape and save the day. He’s been able to find enough moments of brilliance to make that plan almost seem serviceable. But McCoy put it best, when assessing the struggles in the run game: "I feel like we’re putting a ton of pressure on a young quarterback to do everything, and I don’t think that’s fair to him.”

TACKLING

Jaylen Warren went into this game among the league leaders in broken tackles. He’s an elite running back, and until the past two seasons it seems the only thing holding him back was how much his own team was willing to use him.

Well, he ran the Saints ragged in this game. It was easily the most frustrating thing to watch in a game where there were a lot of frustrating things to watch. He's not a big guy, but it felt like every time he was tackled he was carrying a Saints defender for an extra few yards, if not more.

He finished with 101 yards on 18 carries and he wasn’t the only one breaking tackles. Warren and Rico Dowdle combined for 100 yards after contact. Warren's expected yards per carry was 3.8 (per NextGenStats) but he finished with 5.6. The Steelers went 10 for 16 on third downs. Five of those conversions came in the run game. There were seven instances where the Steelers converted on 3rd & 6 or longer.

Here's how those third down conversions went:
- Q1, NO10, 3rd & 5: INC targeting Metcalf (McKinstry)
- Q1, PIT12, 3rd & 2: Warren middle, +6 1D
- Q1, PIT18, 3rd & 1: Warren middle, +3 1D
- Q1, PIT28, 3rd & 3: Warren right guard, +4 1D
- Q2, PIT47, 3rd & 8: INC targeting Bernard
- Q2, PIT45, 3rd & 14: Rodgers deep right to Metcalf, +51 1D
- Q2, NO49, 3rd & 1: Warren middle, +15 1D
- Q2, NO34, 3rd & 10: Rodgers middle to Bernard, +20 1D
- Q2, N025, 3rd & 6: Rodgers sacked -4 (Granderson)
- Q3, PIT30, 3rd & 9: Rodgers middle to Freiermuth, +11 1D
- Q3, PIT47, 3rd & 6: Rodgers middle to Smith, +20 1D
- Q3, NO14, 3rd & 10: Rodgers sacked, -6 (Granderson & Young)
- Q4, PIT47, 3rd & 5: Rodgers sacked, -7 (Young)
- Q4, NO34, 3rd & 6: Rodgers scramble, +8 1D
- Q$, NO19, 3rd & 3: Warren left tackle, no gain

That’s a big factor in why the Steelers only had one drive of 6 or fewer players. They had four separate drives of 10-plus plays, including a possession that burned the final 5:52 in a one-score game.

The interior defensive line was a major issue for the Saints in this game. They’re relying on young players and they were bullied in this matchup. This was probably the game where Bryan Bresee’s presence was missed the most.

The Saints held up in the red zone. They did the bend-but-don’t break thing, and did it pretty well, but man, it’s hard not to see the inability to get off the field quickly as a major flaw of this scheme.

KICKING

It’s probably unfair to ask a guy to kick so much from long range and expect perfection. Still, I expect better. To this stage Daniel Carlson has missed four field goals and a pair of PATs. In this case it was a 52-yarder.

What I think is more concerning than the misses themselves is how non-competitive the misses actually are. In this case it was short and to the right. He didn’t seem to catch the ball cleanly. It was a kick that would’ve trimmed the margin to 3 with a little under 10 minutes to play, instead the Steelers held on to all the momentum.

I think it’s unreasonable to constantly be calling for jobs. It can’t be perfection or nothing. That said, to this stage there’s been nothing to show that this is the best option in the kicking game. There have been more than a fair share of mistakes. The NFL is supposed to be a meritocracy. Pull your weight or someone else will. But too often it seems the Saints are more concerned with sparing feelings than making the tough choices.

To be clear: Carlson isn’t the reason the Saints lost this game. But it’s impossible to look at that situation and pretend it’s anywhere near good enough.

A few more

- The Saints’ ball security in this game was flat-out terible and it’s a small miracle they only had the one giveaway. In the first half along we saw Patrick Queen drop an easy interception, two fumbles reversed on review with the ball-carrier narrowly down by contact, and a punchout shy of the goal line that fortunately went out of bounds.

- There was a theory floating around that simply replacing Cesar Ruiz with Jeremiah Wright would solve the run game. It didn’t. Wright is a solid, developmental player. He’s not ready to start right now.

- I can’t bring myself to be too critical of a QB when he’s playing with a broken hand and has no semblance of a run game. But Shough got a little too checkdown happy in this game, so much so that he missed a wide open Olave on a busted coverage that could’ve potentially put the Saints ahead in the second half. I didn’t see Shough getting to his second-level reads nearly enough in this game, but I see that as a product of shoddy protection and putting far too much on a young QB. Forcing a QB to play under constant duress takes a toll.

- Where has Juwan Johnson gone? He was on pace for another career year with 25 catches for 248 yards and three touchdowns through Week 5, but the last two weeks just 1 catch for 7 yards on 5 targets. Odd, to say the least.

- Stade de France is a beautiful stadium, but man, they have no clue how to host an NFL game. The entire stadium ran out of food by halftime. Seriously. This won’t be a one-off, so hopefully they plan better next time. That said, the beer was only $10. That’s a win.

- I lost a lot of respect for several media outlets and personalities this week, particularly ProFootballTalk, with Mike Florio spending the better part of the week fearmongering over a situation in Paris that he did not even remotely understand. There were protests. There was also 95% of a city that was unaffected by them. There were no issues getting to or from the game. Other than a few businesses and tourist attractions choosing to close, good luck finding anyone who went for the game who didn’t come back with postiive reviews — at least so far as the visit was concerned. The quality of the football might be a different story.

STOCK UP

BIG-PLAY BARION

The first touch of the game for Barion Brown went for a xx-yard loss. It looked to be a reverse-style pop pass play that Pittsburgh sniffed out quickly. It’s the standard type of action we’ve seen for rookie WR in the offense to this point.
The issue with that? Well, any time the Steelers saw him in the formation they knew to be alert for that type of action. The only solution? Use him in other ways.

That’s what we finally started to see in this game. The Saints dialed up a playaction and hit Brown for 49 yards on a deep post. It was a play that got the Saints offense untracked early in this game and the type of action we simply haven’t seen enough of.

Later in the game we saw the Saints hit Brown on a quick screen for a 9-yard gain. He was also in the action as a blocker.

We know what Brown can do in the return game, and his explosive kickoff return midway through the second quarter jumpstarted the Saints’ lone TD drive of the afternoon. The Saints need to keep finding ways to get him involved, even when Jordyn Tyson gets back.

CHASE YOUNG … BEAST

I hope the Saints are enjoying the value they’re getting with Chase Young’s current contact (3/$51M), because before too long they’ll have to pony up somewhere neear that entire contract per season to keep him around.

Every team needs a pass-rusher that you simply can’t ignore. The guy that’s going to come up with the big play in the big moment. A player that’s inevitable. That’s what Chase Young has become.

He had another 1.5 sacks in this game to bring his total to 7 on the season. His career high is 10 last season, and he’s on track to eclipse that total by Week 11.

Today he made the monster play that kept the Saints breathing after a missed field goal gifted the Steelers the ball near midfield, needing just a field goal to push this game likely out of reach. Instead, his rush forced Pittsburgh’s only 3 and out of the day and got the ball back to his offense with a chance to drive for the lead.

That didn’t happen, but you can’t hold it against Chase.

There are things this defense needs to be better at. I’d love to see more of a run game impact. Seven tackles through seven games feels low, but he has had some key passes defensed, as well.

Still, edge rushers get paid for sacks, and Chase is a potential league-leader in that category. That’s something the Saints have been in dire need of, and that’s what they have.

NEW CB PLAN

There’s something that happens on the defensive side of the ball that doesn’t seem to always mirror the offense: When the situation calls for it, changes are made.

That’s what happened this week with Martin Emerson Jr. taking over the starting line from Quincy Riley after a two-interception performance in the win over the Giants. Emerson’s physicality is a clear asset for this defense, and it was needed in this game with the Steelers’ physical pass-catchers.

Emerson contributed xxx tackles and always seemed to be in the action. It’s almost certain that he keeps that job when the Saints return from their bye in Week 9.

But I also thought Kool-Aid McKinstry had a strong day, the lone blemish coming when he went to war with Darnell Washington in the corner of the end zone and the xx, xxx-pound tight end made an incrdible catch through contact. Kool-Aid held up more often than not in the matchups with DK Metcalf. Pittsburgh’s star receiver only logged two catches on the day for 56 yards, with 51 of that coming on a play from the slot where he was matched up on Jonas Sanker in coverage.

HONORABLE MENTION

- I wouldn’t say this was Chris Olave’s best game, but he’s become elite at sideline catches. He had another one in this game that was called incomplete, only to be overturned because he clearly got both feet down. At some point it’d be nice if officials started giving him the benefit of the doubt, because he’s proven he can do it time and again. Make the other team throw the flag.

- The crowd in Paris was fantastic, and the city of Paris is the perfect backdrop for an NFL experience.

- Devaughn Vele continues to come up big when needed. Another five catches for 54 yards and a TD. He matched his career high from his rookie season with that third TD and he's already approaching new high-water marks for catches and yards.