Game Overview ::
By hilow >>
- Saints traded WR Rashid Shaheed to the Seahawks in exchange for fourth- and fifth-round picks.
- The Panthers suddenly find themselves almost fully healthy following a Week 9 upset win over the Packers.
- Rico Dowdle has hit 30 DK points in three of his last five games, or three of three in games where he was the featured back. He did not practice Wednesday as he tends to a quad injury, but head coach Dave Canales has already said, “we’re counting on him this weekend.”
- These two offenses each rank in the bottom eight in DVOA, and both teams are in the top half of the league in defensive DVOA.
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How NEW ORLEANS Will Try To Win ::
Tyler Shough is expected to start under center for the remainder of the season for the Saints following Spencer Rattler’s Week 8 benching. We have an extremely small sample size to work with, but the underlying metrics for Shough hint at the fact that the Saints probably got it right by starting Rattler heading into the season. But with the season now lost, and the team dealing away Shaheed at the deadline, they might as well see if they have anything in Shough the rest of the way. The Saints are coming off a blowout loss to the Rams in which they managed to run only 40 offensive plays, with their drives going three-and-out, three-and-out, three-and-out, field goal, three-and-out, touchdown, fumble, turnover on downs, interception. They somehow ran only 15 offensive plays in the second half of that loss. The Panthers are not in the same zip code as the Rams defensively, but they are in the top half of the league in defensive DVOA while allowing “only” 22.8 points and 316.6 total yards of offense per game – both are vast improvements compared to a season ago. Expect a run-balanced approach for the Saints as long as they are able here.
The two drives in which the Saints put up points against the Rams were started by a 29-yard run by Taysom Hill and a two-minute drill in which the Saints dropped back on every play. I don’t think that is incidental, more likely a signal of not falling behind the sticks and hoping Shough can pass his way out of long down-and-distance situations (spoiler, he most likely can’t). I don’t necessarily know what that means for the run game, but we also have a two-game sample of increased involvement from rookie running back Devin Neal, who has seen a 39% snap rate or higher in consecutive games as the team appears ready to see what they have in their youth. That has kept Alvin Kamara to a 59% snap rate or lower and only six carries in consecutive games. Even so, Neal has only three combined carries in those two games to go with four total targets on the season. There likely isn’t any room for GPP-worthy scores to emerge here against a Panthers opponent allowing 4.6 yards per carry.
Crash the leaderboards
PFP the OWS pennant
We know the Panthers are going to utlize elevated rates of Cover-3 and zone, against which the Saints are averaging a lowly 0.28 FP/DB this season (fourth worst in the league, ahead of only the Panthers on the other side, the Titans, and the Browns). The Saints are coming off a game against another zone-heavy team in the Rams, against whom they managed only 224 yards of total offense, and they just traded away the player Shough fed a team-high nine targets (Shaheed). I would expect veteran Brandin Cooks to be forced into an elevated snap rate as he soaks up additional snaps on the perimeter, leaving recent acquisition Devaughn Vele to handle a higher slot snap rate. I also wouldn’t be shocked if the team increased its 12-personnel rates significantly, getting one of Jack Stoll or Foster Moreau on the field alongside Juwan Johnson at higher rates. The Panthers are a natural inside-funnel defense with the heavy rates of Cover-3 played, which should theoretically benefit Vele and the tight ends the most, although Chris Olave boasts a solid 0.29 targets per route run (TPRR), 2.34 yards per route run (YPRR), and 0.45 fantasy points per route run (FP/RR) against Cover-3 this season.
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