The Saints went into AT&T Stadium as 6-point underdogs, but it was New Orleans that scored touchdowns on its first six possessions en route to a second straight blowout win.
New Saints OC Klint Kubiak was the clear winner of the reunion with his former boss and now Saints DC Mike Zimmer, as Deuce McAllister broke down postgame on WWL Radio.
"I wasn’t necessarily surprised, kind of knew going into it some of the stuff they wanted to do," McAllister said. "I didn’t know if they could continue to do it at the high rate. I thought that Dallas would be able to adjust. Dallas didn’t have the answer."
Listen to the full breakdown from Deuce in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here .
So what was it that the Saints wanted to do? Simple. Run the ball, then run the ball, then run the ball some more -- oh, and with some play action thrown in. Alvin Kamara rolled up 115 yards and three touchdowns on the ground to go with another 65 yards receiving, a majority of which came on a long touchdown on a middle screen. The Saints averaged 4.9 yards per carry and ran for 15 first downs.
That success made life significantly easier in the passing game, with Derek Carr only attempting 16 passes but completing 11 for 242 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
"Going into this ballgame they wanted to run the football," McAllister continued. "They did not want to say hey, we’re going to allow you to just rush our quarterback and put our tackles on the islands. Man, those guys up front, man, kudos, hats off to you guys, because you played your tail off. You created movement in the run game and you allowed your quarterback to sit back there and not really get hit a lot. They’re gonna get some hits on the cornerback and we know about the turnover as far as the throw over the middle, but I don’t know if you can’t go out and execute a gameplan any better than what that Saints team did."
What's next? Well, the next 15 games of a long season that will no longer feature the majority of the NFL landscape giving New Orleans no real respect. They've put the league on notice, but still have to keep that edge they've had over the first two weeks of the season filled with doubters.
"You can clean [things] up and make it even better and that’s the goal and the point of what those coaches have to be able to sell, because guess what — everybody is gonna tell you how cute you are now, you’re so pretty, you’re doing everything right and go ahead," McAllister said. "I’m still the ugly red-headed step child that you don’t like. Leave me alone and let me just be the guy that you don’t like and go prove it on the field.”
MORE FROM DEUCE
On Kamara's big day
“He finds those creases and I mean, for — you knew Zim calling up some of his guys, bringing some of his guys in that hadn’t even really practiced a lot. They knew the system, but it was more of a personnel and I don’t want to call it structural defensively, but he doesn’t have the guys that he wants here in yet and I don’t know if they have the command of that defense yet that he wants to have, and so you knew going into it, like I said, you were familiar just because you had a lot of guys on that staff that practiced against it, you knew some of the things that they didn’t like. They kind of had an idea offensively of what you didn’t like, but when they can run the ball, you know, any team, when they can run the ball like the Saints did today, what are you gonna take away? You can say I’m gonna bring a safety down, now I’m leaving that speed on the outside in 1-on-1 situations and so you saw the Saints take advantage of it.”
On strong day for the DBs
“I think Kool-Aid [McKinstry], he did a really nice job. The Saints had a really good plan as well. That was, I think it was important. A lot of times they were gonna double Ceedee Lamb and tell the other guys go beat us. It didn’t help Dallas that their top tight end was out, so you saw them work the tight end a little bit more into this game as far as the other guys, but the Saints didn't get tricked, didn't get fooled too much. Like I said, you can nitpick and fuss about some other stuff, but that’s a good offense. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good offense and they’re gonna put a lot of points on the board and the Saints were like, hey, we’re gonna bend but don’t break in a sense. When you get down in this red zone you won’t be able to score. We’re gonna condense the field and didn’t send a ton of pressure. When they did they had some chances to get rid of it. Dak got it out of his hands, you know, there was a fumble return that you tried to — I’m not gonna fuss at you for it, but if you can’t get it on the bounce, scoop and score, just cover it up, but defensively, man, you’re a tough group and I think that you’re only gonna get better.”
Local News
Comments / 0