Who's the best team in the NFC South…#PMSLive pic.twitter.com/GUaT2RlhcE
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) April 11, 2023
Yikes, Adam Jones. The former NFL cornerback has been trying to make a second career in the media, but appearances like his mistake-filled rant against the New Orleans Saints on the Pat McAfee Show isn’t going to look great on his resume.
At first, Jones took aim at Derek Carr’s fit in the offense, which is fair. The Saints are high on Carr but until he actually does it, it’s all a projection. They guaranteed a ton of money to Carr in hopes he can get their offense on track, but Jones says he needs to see it to believe it’s worthwhile.
“Who the hell knows what this guy’s going to do? We don’t even know what the Saints are going to do. We know what happened (in Las Vegas),” Jones began.
The conversation shifted to the Saints defense, with McAfee and his co-hosts listing the many veteran starters New Orleans will lean on, like Cameron Jordan, Tyrann Mathieu, Demario Davis, and Marshon Lattimore. Their defense has been the strength of the team for years, with the Saints continually stacking talented young cornerbacks like Alontae Taylor and Paulson Adebo behind veterans Lattimore and Bradley Roby.
“Yeah, right,” Jones scoffed. “The Saints (expletive) corners (expletive) suck. They gave up more yards than any other NFL team this year. I don’t know what y’all are talking about. Have y’all seen the Saints? Have y’all forgot?”
Jones is right about one thing — he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. McAfee and his team were on one planet, and Jones was somewhere else in a galaxy far, far away. But he doubled down, laughing and lying: “They was allowing like 330 (yards) a game. It was 7-on-7 with the Saints last year.”
It’s embarrassing to see someone get on a national platform and drop the ball like this. The Saints defense yielded 184.4 passing yards per game in 2022, second-best around the league. They didn’t allow 300 or more yards in a single game at all throughout the season (the Tampa Bay Buccaneers came closest with 274 yards in Week 13). You have to go all the way back to 2012 to find a Saints defense that comes close to what Jones is accusing, and even then they were giving up just 292 yards a game.
We’ll be generous and assume that, maybe, Jones meant total defensive yards allowed per game — in which the Saints allowed 314 yards each week. But that’s the sixth-best mark around the league in 2022. Instead of offering smart and informed analysis, he chose to be loud and wrong, and everyone tuning in is worse off for it.
Jones just made this bad take up out of thin air and floated it to an audience of millions of listeners. Either Jones needs to do his homework before he gets in front of another microphone, or else McAfee needs to do a better job preparing his guests before giving them a platform.
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