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The New Orleans Saints bounced back in a big way against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, rebounding from its worst performance in recent years a week earlier to move the Buccaneers defensive line at will. And much of that success came up front, off of the efforts of blockers like right tackle Ryan Ramczyk.
A surprise boost came from backup left guard Nick Easton, who filled in for injured starter Andrus Peat and ended up earning New Orleans’ highest grade on offense from Pro Football Focus. When asked whether he could sense Easton’s eagerness to get back on the field, Ramczyk confirmed it.
“Yes, definitely,” Ramczyk said during a conference call with New Orleans media. “When we’re out there he’s encouraging and you could tell he was excited and ready to go. He definitely had a good mentality about getting the start and I think he did a great job. Whenever you can have a guy like that who is vocal and trying to get the team going, it amps us up too. Definitely a positive.”
Still, Ramczyk had to double back to his unit’s poor performance against the Atlanta Falcons. Painful as that game was — the Saints ran for a season-low 52 yards, and allowed a season-high six sacks — it provided plenty of teaching moments for the Saints offensive line. And it also gave them some added motivation to carry into practice down the stretch.
“That Atlanta game was not what we’re about and something we weren’t proud of at all,” Ramczyk said. “There’s a lot of bad stuff that happened in that game and we looked at that film and corrected it. As an offensive line, like I said, we want to be able to run the ball. We want to be able to pass the ball.”
And the Saints accomplished both of those goals against Tampa Bay, despite the Buccaneers’ ranking as one of the NFL’s best run defenses (just 81 yards allowed per game). New Orleans racked up 109 rushing yards as a team and controlled the time of possession, holding the ball for 37 minutes. While the Saints passing attack didn’t put up eye-popping numbers, that efficiency was what they wanted to see.
Ramczyk continued: “Two of the most important things is keeping Drew [Brees] protected, keeping him clean, and then being able to open up the run game. Week to week, that’s something we take a lot of pride in and we try to hold ourselves to a really high standard in those two aspects. Like you said, it was uncharacteristic against Atlanta, but we’re going to get on this roll and keep going and playing our game, playing our football.”
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