What We Saw: Saints at Buccaneers

Let's go over what we saw with the Saints visiting the Buccaneers on Monday night.

Michael James
What We Saw A Year Ago

Saints @ Buccaneers

Final Score: Buccaneers 17, Saints 16

Writer: Michael James (@MikeoftheFF on Twitter)

 

Welcome to Monday night at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa FL.  Tonight we’re watching the Bucs host the Saints in this divisional game.  Tampa Bay is trying to maintain its hold on first place as New Orleans looks to make up some ground tonight in a wild division where all the points are worthless and all four losing records don’t matter.  Someone has to win first place, let’s find out if it will be one of these two teams tonight.  The Buccaneers take the opening drive 72 yards in 16 plays in a nice methodical drive that once again hit a brick wall once they got inside the 5-yard line, resulting in a Ryan Succop kick to get Tampa on the board for 3 points.  At this point, the defenses would take over as teams would trade multiple punts before we get another score.  The Saints would foil multiple deep attempts for Tampa’s offense, and the Buccaneers would get a sack on third down to push New Orleans off the field.  Each team has made the other one go 3 and out.

Finally, we get some offense going halfway through the second quarter as the Saints put together a drive featuring Andy Dalton who had completions of 19 and 20 yards before connecting with Taysom Hill for a 30-yard touchdown to put the Saints on the board for 7 points.  Rashid Shaheed already had a 40-yard Dalton bomb come his way and then added a 42-yard punt return to set up first down for New Orleans in midfield.  However, it’s too good to be true as the Saints go three and out to continue the offensive pain punting it away.  With 90 seconds left in the first half, Tom Brady completed an absolute bullet to Demario Davis, who plays for the Saints.  Now Dalton takes the ball inside 2 minutes, but drops continue to plague this receiving unit and Wil Lutz comes out to push the Saints’ lead up another 3 points to take us into half-time Saints 10 Buccaneers 7.

 

 

About halfway through the third quarter, we see some offense rise as the Saints get to the red zone off of a 21-yard pass from Hill to Chris Olave.  However 6 players later inside the red zone, the Saints still can’t break through and we get another Lutz field goal to add three points for the Saints.  Meanwhile, the boos are really raining down now as the Bucs are punting it over yet again.  The Saints go back to work and get into the red zone thanks to another deep ball to Olave and a defensive pass interference call favoring Olave.  However, they would stall out again bringing on more work for Lutz with another field goal.

 

 

Among the boos and the questionable decisions from the coaching staff, it all starts to settle as with less than 5 minutes to go in the game, Brady engineers the hurry-up offense and drives it 91 yards in just over 2 minutes concluding with a 44-yard pass interference call benefiting Mike Evans against Paulson Adebo.  With that, we have first and goal on the 1-yard line for Tampa.  Brady rolls out with the play-action and finds Cade Otton for the touchdown, Buccaneers pull within 6.  The Saints only managed to take 30 seconds off the clock before punting it back over.  Brady has 2 and a half minutes to get a touchdown, and he gets to work in the usual Tom Brady fashion, dissecting a reeling defense to get them into the red zone.  He would find Chris Godwin for the touchdown, only to have it nullified by a holding penalty.  He would go back to Godwin to get most of the lost yards back.  Tampa Bay has 7 seconds left in the game and needs a touchdown which is just 6 yards away.  If you’ve seen Brady play before then you know how this one ends.  Rachaad White catches the touchdown pass and the Buccaneers win it 17-16.  The Saints will go into their bye week while the Bucs travel to San Francisco.  And like ESPN after Brady drops a casual LFG into a hot mic, I too will be immediately cutting away to see you next week.

 

 

New Orleans Saints

 

Quarterback

 

Andy Dalton: 20/28, 225 Yards, TD | 1 Carry, -1 Yard

Taysom Hill: 1/1, 21 Yards | 3 Carries, 10 Yards

 

This one has to sting.  Who is this Prime Time Dalton?  Tonight we saw Andy Dalton and I got to say he looked good for what he was faced with.  The Tampa Bay defense was relentless up front, and he did not have a lot of time to throw.  He spent the night trying to get the ball out quickly.  I did not see a lot of glaringly bad throws that were asking to be picked off tonight.  He had a couple of receivers have issues with dropping the ball, and the secondary played the matchups tight resulting in quite a few contested incomplete passes.  But he was able to hook up deep in this game.   He only needed 5 pass completions to go over 100 yards passing in the first half.  They punted the ball 6 times, 5 of them were 3 and out’s.   Add that to going 5 for 14 on third-down conversions and most of the potential momentum was just killed.

 

 

Running Back

 

Alvin Kamara: 12 Carries, 26 Yards | 3 Targets, 2 Receptions, 11 Yards | 1 Fumble (Recovered)

Mark Ingram II: 7 Carries, 27 Yards | 5 Targets, 5 Receptions, 22 Yards

Adam Prentice: 1 Carry, 2 Yards

 

And this one has to sting fantasy owners.  The same stats apply to the volume of this position as well when going 3 and out.  That’s just potential clock-winding runs that aren’t happening.  Alvin Kamara looked okay as far as ability and how hard he ran, but he’s getting hit at or behind the line of scrimmage far too often (the entire game tonight).  The run blocking is well below what it should be and definitely what it used to be before this point in the season.  He got outrushed by Mark Ingram despite having 5 more carries on the day, but neither back blew you away with their performance.

 

Wide Receiver/Tight End

 

Chris Olave: 6 Targets, 4 Receptions, 65 Yards

Rashid Shaheed: 4 Targets, 4 Receptions, 71 Yards

Taysom Hill: 3 Targets, 2 Receptions, 35 Yards, TD | 3 Carries, 10 Yards

Adam Trautman: 3 Targets, 2 Receptions, 28 Yards

Jarvis Landry: 3 Targets, 2 Receptions, 14 Yards, 1 Fumble (Recovered)

 

The first-half hero was Rashid Shaheed, bringing in every catch tonight, all in the first half of the game including a beautiful-looking 40-yard bomb to get the Saints from the back end of their territory up to midfield.

 

 

However, that drive resulted in a punt too.  Most of Chris Olave‘s work came in the second half, as he was the chain mover for their drives that ended in field goals.  In fact, every drive that he caught a pass on ended in a field goal.  He did have a deep ball thrown to him that would have converted a third down into the red zone instead go right off his hands resulting in the first drop of his NFL career.  The swiss army knife himself, Taysom Hill, caught the team’s lone touchdown pass of the game, and fantasy owners that played him in their lineup came out winning in the lottery game that is starting a tight end that doesn’t rhyme with Kravis Telce.  Jarvis Landry had a potential touchdown pass he attempted to bring in one-handed but wasn’t able to hold on to it to bring it in.

 

 

 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

 

Quarterback

 

Tom Brady: 36/54, 281 Yards, 2 TD, INT | 1 Carry, -1 Yards

 

I guess the coaches complaining about this offense passing it too much lasted all of one game and now we’re back to lobbing it up 40+ times a game.  No matter, you have Tom Brady and you got this.  I even remarked to my friend towards the end of the third quarter that it is going to be really funny when the Saints lose this game 17-16.  I don’t even think it was a bold prediction, we’ve seen him do this for two decades now.  Still, having 2 minutes on the clock and needing a touchdown to win when you’re Tom F. Brady certainly helps.  Lately, the Saints’ defense has owned Brady and for 55 minutes it looked like they continued to own him.  The pressure was relentless, his offensive line couldn’t pass protect to buy him any time.  The secondary was on point and a lot of incompletes were well-defended balls.  I think the one interception was Brady’s fault, the Saints looked to be in zone coverage and he threw a fastball straight to the Saints player who was almost standing still.

 

 

Running Back

 

Leonard Fournette: 10 Carries, 49 Yards | 7 Targets, 6 Receptions, 32 Yards

Rachaad White: 9 Carries, 28 Yards | 8 Targets, 6 Receptions, 41 Yards, TD | 1 Fumble (Lost)

 

Rachaad White was the starting running back for the Buccaneers tonight and the hero of the game bringing in the game-winning touchdown reception.  He did not rush particularly well, but expectations were already tempered facing a Saints defense that knows how to contain your offense.  They would combine to rush it a total of 19 times for 77 total team yards.   But he did some damage in the passing game, especially on the final play where it mattered most.  Leonard Fournette was back from injury and rotated in on the first drive after 9 plays on their opening drive.  He stayed in until they settled for a field goal 7 plays later.  The overall split was 50/50 and I would assume it will remain an evenly split committee for the rest of the season.  I have to be honest, this is a bit of a confusing thing to compare the eye test versus the stat line.  Fournette outrushed White, but it didn’t feel that way.  Fournette ran hard, but he looked significantly slower and at times outright inferior.  “Quick” was not a feeling I got watching him run the ball.

 

 

Wide Receiver/Tight End

 

Chris Godwin: 13 Targets, 8 Receptions, 63 Yards

Mike Evans: 4 Targets, 4 Receptions, 59 Yards

Cade Otton: 10 Targets, 6 Receptions, 28 Yards, TD

Julio Jones: 6 Targets, 3 Receptions, 28 Yards

Ko Kieft: 2 Targets, 1 Reception, 12 Yards

Russell Gage: 1 Target, 1 Reception, 11 Yards

Scotty Miller: 2 Targets, 1 Reception, 7 Yards

 

Are we sure Marshon Lattimore was ruled out for tonight?  Or is he just so good he haunts Mike Evans even from the sideline?  Brady did go deep to Evans twice, once for just over 20 yards and the other drawing a pass interference call that put Tampa Bay on the 1-yard line for their first touchdown.  Still, team-player points don’t exist in fantasy, and players were left with only 9 points from their WR1.  He appeared to be the Saints’ number one priority and it worked for most of the night anyway, Brady did not like what he saw when he looked in the direction of Evans.  Someone he did like what he was seeing was Chris Godwin.  The point-per-reception machine was on point tonight and led the team in targets, receptions, and yards.  The power slot receiver looks like his old self again and is brutal for teams to try to account for.  He even had a would-be game-winning touchdown catch nullified by a penalty allowing White to get the reception two plays later.

Cade Otton also was very dominant tonight, coming in second behind Godwin for targets and receptions.  He had the first touchdown reception for the team in their 4th quarter comeback win.  If Evans was on the losing end for his quarterback not having any time to throw in the pocket, then Otton is the main benefactor to him needing to get the ball out lightning fast (Godwin gets his targets regardless of the situation).  Julio Jones also looked solid for those in deep leagues and was highlighted on the broadcast for his mechanics on plays where he isn’t getting the ball.

 

 

Photos by Beautiful Sports/Imago/Icon Sportswire and All-Pro Reels (https://www.flickr.com/people/joeglo/) | Adapted by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns on Twitter)

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