Category: 2023 season

Derek Carr sits outside of NFL analyst’s top-20 in final QB rankings

Derek Carr’s late-season surge gave confidence for 2024, but it wasn’t enough for this NFL analyst to consider him a top-20 quarterback in 2023:

New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr has arguably been the most discussed player on the team in 2023. The expectations were high and unmet. Your opinion on Carr’s debut season depends on if his flashes hold more weight than the majority of the season in your mind. They don’t in the mind of NFL.com analyst Nick Shook .

Carr ranks as Shook’s 22nd best quarterback out of 66 passers who started last season. That’s a one spot better than he ranked in 2022. Shook suggests Carr’s inconsistencies are representative of the team’s similar struggles, writing:

Carr was supposed to finally answer the Saints’ long-running problem under center, one that has persisted since the moment Drew Brees retired. He may have done so, but it took him nearly an entire season to get there. The Saints were an incredibly frustrating operation in 2023 because they didn’t know who they wanted to be until the final month, and that included Carr, a quarterback who frequently checked down and inexplicably struggled to establish a connection with 2022 first-round pick Chris Olave until, well, the last couple of weeks. Dennis Allen nearly lost his job because of these issues (and a defense that didn’t live up to expectation), but the Saints are entering 2024 with all of the good vibes because of how they finished. Carr finally found a consistent rhythm and pushed the ball down the field, giving New Orleans reason to believe he could be worth the four-year, $150 million deal he signed in last March. And as always, he proved his toughness, starting in every game despite suffering multiple injuries through the course of 2023.

Shook is right to say that Carr’s most consistent performances came at the end of the year, but it wasn’t against strong competition. New Orleans won four of their last five games but only beat one team with a winning record, the 9-8 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That low quality of competition is likely what kept Carr outside of the top 20 despite a late surge. He needs to start 2024 hot and carry that success over against another weak schedule.

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Saints free agent report card: Was Johnathan Abram a good veteran signing?

Saints free agent report card: Was Johnathan Abram a good veteran signing?

The New Orleans Saints defense had an up-and-down season in 2023, but they found some smooth sailing in the latter half of the season. A lot of that had to do with some veterans stepping up and performing well

One of the players that broke out in the second half of the season was veteran safety Johnathan Abram, who spent the first half of the year on the practice squad.

To wrap up the series for last season’s most impactful free agent signings (we previously discussed Foster Moreau, Jamaal Williams, Nathan Shepherd, and Khalen Saunders), here is Abram’s 2023 report card:

Saints free agent report card: Was Khalen Saunders a good defensive signing?

Our next New Orleans Saints free agent report card: Was Khalen Saunders a good defensive signing from the Kansas City Chiefs?

The New Orleans Saints retooled their defensive line last season, replacing most of the players that were roster in 2022. They lost Shy Tuttle and David Onyemata to big contracts within the NFC South with other players leaving the rotation like Kentavius Street, but were they able to replace them with some other nice players on the inside.

One of the players they brought in was former Kansas City Chiefs nose tackle Khalen Saunders. Saunders became an immediate fan favorite due to his athletic ceiling made apparent by his viral front-flip ability.

It’s time for the next free agency report card as we keep this series going and evaluate his first season in black and gold, just as we did with fellow defensive tackle Nathan Shepherd. Here’s Saunders’ 2023 report card:

Saints free agent report card: Was Nathan Shepherd a good veteran signing?

Our next New Orleans Saints 2023 free agent report card: Was Nathan Shepherd a good veteran signing at defensive tackle?

Few positions looked as different last season compared to the year before as the New Orleans Saints’ defensive tackles. With their position coach leaving for a promotion, the Saints allowed the entire group to test free agency while bringing in veteran replacements and spending their top draft pick on a new centerpiece.

So how did they perform individually? We’re keeping our 2023 Saints free agent report card series going after reviewing Foster Moreau and Jamaal Williams. Which leads us to the next question: was Nathan Shepherd a good veteran signing at defensive tackle?

Saints free agent report card: Was Foster Moreau a good veteran signing?

Our New Orleans Saints free agent report card series continues with Foster Moreau. Was signing the veteran tight end a good move?

There weren’t many outside observers expecting the New Orleans Saints to be active in free agency last season, but they were able to add veterans at positions of need like Foster Moreau.

And it made a lot of sense to sign him: Moreau was a favorite target of Derek Carr’s when they were together on the Las Vegas Raiders, he added some much-needed experience to the tight end position, and he was popular among fans as a New Orleans local who played college football at LSU.

But that’s all behind us now. It’s time to keep this series going and evaluate his first season in black and gold, just as we did with running back Jamaal Williams. Here’s Moreau’s 2023 report card:

Saints free agent report card: Was Jamaal Williams a good veteran signing?

We’re kicking off our New Orleans Saints free agent report cards with Jamaal Williams. The veteran running back didn’t meet expectations in 2023:

We’re kicking off our New Orleans Saints free agent report cards with Jamaal Williams. The veteran running back didn’t meet expectations in 2023 after being heralded as an ideal tag-team partner for Alvin Kamara and Taysom Hill. Here’s a look back at his first season in New Orleans, his contract status, and what’s next for him:

Cowboys’ Pollard: ‘I was back’ starting with Week 11; the numbers say he wasn’t

From @ToddBrock24f7: The Cowboys RB says he felt fully recovered from his leg injury in a Nov. 19 win; the stats don’t show any improvement the rest of the way.

The Cowboys’ run game — or lack thereof —was certainly one of the disappointments of the team’s 2023 season. Running back Tony Pollard was set to be the bell cow for the first time after the offseason departure of two-time rushing champ Ezekiel Elliott, and the shifty change-of-pace back would finally get top billing in Dallas’s high-octane offense in Week 1.

But the fifth-year Memphis man was also coming off a brutal lower leg injury sustained less than eight months prior; a fractured fibula and high ankle sprain suffered in the playoff loss to the 49ers. He went on to rack up five yards per carry in the season opener and topped 120 yards a few weeks later against Arizona, but he didn’t resemble the same dynamic runner fans had seen prior to the injury.

Turns out, Pollard didn’t feel the same, either.

Interviewed multiple times during Super Bowl Week, Pollard revealed “The Carolina game is when I probably felt like I was back to my old self.”

The stats, unfortunately, don’t back up that pronouncement.

The Cowboys were already 6-3 coming into that visit to Charlotte. It was Week 11, just four days before Thanksgiving. The season was more than half over. That’s admittedly a long time for the team to have gone without their primary ball carrier feeling like he was 100%.

Dallas had appeared to take offseason precautions to make sure they had backfield depth behind Pollard. They signed veteran Ronald Jones. They drafted the electrifying Deuce Vaughn. Rico Dowdle was once again healthy. Malik Davis waited in the wings.

Jones was dumped immediately after serving a two-game suspension to start the season. The Vaughn experiment was brought to a merciful end after five painful weeks of wasted carries and minimal results. Dowdle saw single-digit carries more games than not. Davis never took a game snap with the offense.

And while Pollard now defines that mid-November Panthers game as a turning point in his season, his numbers in the nine games leading up to that contest and the nine-game span that followed — which includes the postseason — look nearly identical.

Att Yds TDs Yds/Att Att/Gm Yds/Gm
Games 1-9 135 529 2 3.92 15.0 58.8
Games 10-18 132 532 5 4.03 14.7 59.1

Perhaps the most troubling figure there is yards per rushing attempt. Consider that Pollard averaged 5.3 yards per carry as a rookie, then 5.5 in 2021, and 5.2 in 2022. His previous season low had been 4.3 in 2020.

Those years all saw Pollard used in combination with Elliott. His first season as Dallas’s clear-cut lead back? Just 4.0 yards per carry.

Pollard may have felt like he was finally “back” starting in Week 11, but in actuality, he produced no differently whatsoever from that point forward, apart from a few extra touchdowns.

He did go on to notch a 1,000-yard season, but under a 17-game schedule, that once-venerated plateau doesn’t have the same mystique. It requires a rather pedestrian 59 yards per game now to hit 1,000; Pollard averaged 59.1, ending up at 1,005. He had more outings with under 40 yards (three) than with over 80 (one).

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Pollard has said he would like to remain a Cowboy. “If I could choose, I would love to be in Dallas,” he told Blogging the Boys just last week. “But at the end of the day, it is a business. So it is what it is, and you have to be ready for what comes.”

And what’s coming for Pollard is, more than likely, free agency. He played 2023 on a franchise tag, and it’s difficult to imagine the team feels like they got their $10.9 million’s worth.

They may have even been willing to wait through the early part of the season, as he recovered fully from that nasty injury, for him to feel like his old self. Problem is, even once he says he did, he never played like his old self.

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Post-Super Bowl NFL power rankings have the Saints in the middle of the pack

There were ups and downs throughout the season, but a strong finish placed the Saints in the top half of these post-Super Bowl NFL power rankings:

The New Orleans Saints find themselves at No. 15 in the NFL.com’s Eric Edholm final power rankings of 2023. This leaves the Saints sitting in the middle of the pack, which feels appropriate with the entire season. There were long stretches of feeling like the Saints were a below-average team, and at times their poor results proved those doubts valid. New Orleans ended the season strongly, though.

Here’s what Edholm wrote in ranking the Saints at No. 15:

The team’s annual salary-cap surgery must begin soon, given that the Saints open the offseason with the most work left to do. They’re projected to be more than $80 million over the cap as things stand now, and even with some obvious sources for savings, this major hurdle threatens to weaken the team at several key positions: on both lines of scrimmage, at cornerback and at wide receiver. New Orleans also must figure out the future of important but expensive specialists in Alvin Kamara and Taysom Hill. With Derek Carr locked in this offseason at QB, there’s a worry that the Saints might not be able to do enough to surround him with the kind of talent he needs. This offense was out of sorts throughout 2023, prone to wild swings in effectiveness on a week-to-week basis, and there’s no clear path to adding major talent this offseason. Oh, and Dennis Allen is back for a third season with a lot to prove. How are you feeling about this team right now, Saints fans?

Numerically, No. 16 would be the definition of average in the NFL. The Saints played well enough to end the season right above that. In reality, that’s still an average team, and they barely make the “top half” of the league. They weren’t good enough to get into the playoffs New Orleans benefitted from a weak schedule down the stretch, but a win against the NFC South-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 17 makes the placement understandable.

In order to improve on these results, New Orleans has to find a way to even out those ups and downs. Better first half performances are a must, and they have to show it against better teams. They’ll likely have a weak schedule again, and the Saints have to take advantage of it better than they did this past season.

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NFL analyst says Saints’ 2023 draft class made a poor first impression

This NFL analyst graded the New Orleans Saints’ 2023 draft class a C+, saying that they made a poor first impression:

Looking back on it now, the biggest critique of the 2023 New Orleans Saints draft class was overall inactivity. Defensive tackle Bryan Bresee was the only draftee you can point to who played significant time, so it’s not difficult to see why NFL.com’s Eric Edholm gave the draft class a C+ grade. Jordan Howden also filled in at safety due to injuries, but he spent half of the season only coming in for specific packages. It’s just difficult to grade a class high when most of the players didn’t see the field often.

Defensive end Isaiah Foskey, offensive lineman Nick Saldiveri and quarterback Jake Haener were absolute non-factors in 2023. Haener was a third-string quarterback, as expected, so there’s no problem there. Foskey and Saldiveri, however, were disappointments this year. The Saints’ pass rush struggled so badly that defensive end is still looked at as a priority to many this offseason. Despite that, Foskey barely saw the field. The health of the offensive line was depleted, but there was still no Saldiveri, who ended the year with his own injury.

The grade is fair but still tough to swallow. New Orleans’ rookie draft class was disappointing in their debut season, but that doesn’t mean they can’t improve. Howden, wide receiver A.T. Perry and running back Kendre Miller all flashed the potential to be quality players with more snaps. Time will tell if Foskey or Saldiveri make an impact, but it feels as if they’ll be pushed down the depth chart this offseason. The only sure thing the Saints have from their draft class is Bresee. Hopefully he can continue to dodge the injury bug that trailed him in college and make plays for the defensive line.

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Browns assistant coach Ben Blooms leaves for Titans role

The Cleveland Browns lost another member of its coaching staff to the Tennessee Titans.

The Cleveland Browns lost a coaching assistant this week after Ben Bloom left to join the Tennessee Titans.

The team announced Bloom would be the new outside linebackers coach after he coached the Browns’ defensive line this past season.

Bloom had effectively been replaced already by former Houston Texans assistant Jacques Cesaire, who had assumed the role of defensive line coach that Bloom previously held. There were reports Bloom could remain with the Browns in a different role, but now he’s headed to the Titans.

He joined Kevin Stefanski’s staff in 2020 as a senior defensive assistant before Bloom transitioned over to run game coordinator from 2021 to 2022. He then coached the defensive line this past season. Bloom joins former Browns offensive line coach Bill Callahan, who is the father of Titans head coach Brian Callahan.

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