Part of why I enjoy pro football more than college football is that in any week, one team can beat another, and there aren’t nearly as many blowouts. On the other hand in the pros, there are still cases where one team dominates another, and this was one of the exceptions.
The Saints offense marched up and down the field, scoring touchdowns on each of the first four drives to immediately make the game out of reach. The Colts on the other hand punted and fumbled twice on their first four drives. Such was the dominance that in the third quarter, the Colts had a total of six offensive plays, meaning the rest of the game we saw a lot of backups in.
Never before do I remember an offense so dominant, with the team performing well in passing, running, pass blocking, run blocking and screen blocking. This game reinforced what we already knew about these two teams. New Orleans has one of the best teams in the NFL, while Indianapolis is going nowhere fast.
New Orleans Saints: Three Performances of Note
Passing First Down after First Down
The biggest reason the Saints won is that the offense completed a lot of underneath passes, keeping the chains moving and eventually leading to points. The base statistics for Drew Brees (+6.6) were excellent; he had completed 31 of 35 passes for 325 yards and five touchdowns. He didn’t have any huge plays during the game, just a lot of throws where he had short receivers open, and he was able to hit them. He threw the ball beyond 10 yards just five times; where he had four completions for 81 yards. Due to how quickly the game became out of reach, he never needed to make the great throws that we have so often seen from him. So this performance was more about how rarely he made mistakes. Only twice did he receive negative ratings; once for overthrowing and once for a forced throw. It didn’t hurt that his offensive line kept pressure away from him, with only four of his 35 throws seeing him under any sort of duress. During that time he was sacked twice, threw one incompletion and had one completion, pondering what could have been if the Colts could have rattled him more.
Running Out The Clock
Over the first three games, Mark Ingram (+1.9) showed signs of a quiet rookie year, with three straight games with a negative run rating. In recent weeks however, he has stepped his game up and put up his best numbers in this one. On 14 carries he had 91 yards, with 43 of them coming after contact, and had three players miss tackles on him. He and the other Saints runners had help from the rest of the team, as fullback Jed Collins (+2.1) had his fourth straight game with a positive run block rating giving him a big lead in the fullback ratings. The rest of the offensive line played very well, with four of the five having a rating above one. Having this consistent a run game kept the Saints driving early when they started scoring points, as well as late in the game while they ran out the clock and kept the Colts off the field.
Defense Not Solved
After allowing seven points, you would think the Saints would have had a lot of players with high ratings on defense as well as offense. Only little known DT Tom Johnson (+1.4) and second year CB Patrick Robinson (+1.1) had overall ratings in the green. In terms of pass rushing, the entire team had just one sack, three hits and one pressure. You would like to see more than that considering the Saints brought five or more pass rushers on 17 of 29 pass plays. In the run game, the Colts offense has a few successful run plays that happened because a number of Saints linemen and LBs were blocked; typically to the inside. Because the Colts were down early, they could never try to establish a run game so this didn’t hurt New Orleans too much. On the bright side, in coverage they did better than usual.
Indianapolis Colts: Three Performances of Note
The Worst of the Worst
Of the 21 players on the Colts to play a snap on defense, 17 had negative overall ratings. While that makes it easy to blame everyone on defense for the embarrassing loss, there are some who deserve the blame more than others. We’ll start with OLB Kavell Conner (-4.5), where on five run plays we marked him down for getting blocked out of a play at the second level. He was also thrown at five times where he allowed 53 yards and a touchdown. DT Daniel Muir (-4.6) also stands out, as the three inside linemen for the Saints were able to push Muir around to open up holes for their run game; mostly in the second quarter. He was also responsible for rushing the passer for 19 plays, but was invisible in that time never getting pressure. He had an encroachment penalty to top it all off.
The Painter We Remember
Outside of his game against Kansas City, Curtis Painter (-1.9) hasn’t been much of a step up compared to Kerry Collins. In order to keep up with the Saints, the offense needs to a lot, yet there were only two plays where we found reason to give Painter a positive rating, and those were two first downs in the first quarter. He ended up with 3.9 yards per attempt, and on his five throws beyond 10 yards he had as many completions to Colts players as he did Saints players. Indianapolis has a number of well known receivers, but TE Dallas Clark (-0.4 receiving) wasn’t even thrown at, and the leader in receiving yards was Reggie Wayne (-0.4 receiving) with just 36 yards. Typically when a quarterback has a rough game throwing the ball it’s partially due to being under pressure, but that was not true here. The offense allowed no sacks, three hits and no pressures, so Painter did most of the damage with the time he wanted.
Finding a Positive Somewhere
The player with the best overall rating for the Colts was punter Pat McAfee (+2.1). Due to the offenses struggles, McAfee had six punts. His highlights were his long punts, where he had a 56 yarder as well as a 54 yard one; both longer than some punters longest punts on the season. He also had two kicks go within the 20 yard line. While neither of his two kickoffs was touched back, the Saints average start position on these two drives was just the 21.5 yard line.
Game Notes
– Nine of Thomas Morstead’s ten kickoffs were touched back.
– The Saints were best when running to the outside, where they had 16 carries for 132 yards, a touchdown and five missed tackles.
– The most an individual Colts defensive back was targeted was five times.
PFF Game Ball
There were exceptional performances across the piece from the Saints’ offense but Drew Brees absolutely ran the show in this game, a peerless performance.
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