Tag: Pete Carmichael

Saints coach search: Do they meet Ben Johnson’s requirements?

It’s been reported that Lions OC Ben Johnson has two requirements for any head coaching vacancy he’ll consider. Do the Saints qualify?

Ben Johnson is projected to be the leading candidate in the head coaching cycle this year. He’s been a name thrown around for a couple of years, and Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer has reported Johnson’s approach to head coaching vacancies this year.

If Johnson is interviewing, he fully plans on taking the job. This means any team sits down with Johnson has a good chance to land him. In the past, coaches have interviewed just to gather information on the job.

Johnson also a pair of criteria for any vacancy. Do the New Orleans Saints meet those requirements?

Breer reports Johnson is looking for “Organizational alignment — in particular between the GM and the head coach. And then he’ll be looking for recognition from the organization of the things that have gone wrong, and a willingness to fix them.”

Organizational alignment won’t be determined until he gets in the room, and it’s difficult from the outside looking in. As for the second criteria, will New Orleans recognize what went wrong.

There are a couple of ways to look at this. Mickey Loomis has made comments to make you wonder if he actually sees the downfall of the Dennis Allen era or if firing Allen was just something that had to happen.

On the other hand, the Saints fired their head coach in the middle of the year and let go of Pete Carmichael. The last year has been filled with making the necessary moves. This could be a sign to Johnson of the Saints’ ability to recognize and course correct.

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Sean Payton speaks on the decision to sign another ex-Saints wide receiver

Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton spoke on the decision to sign another ex-Saints wide receiver. He views A.T. Perry as someone worth developing:

Sean Payton earned some more ire from New Orleans Saints fans last week when his Denver Broncos signed another ex-Saints player — former 2023 draft pick A.T. Perry, the wide receiver from Wake Forest. Perry showed up on game days but his poor day-to-day performance at practice didn’t help his case for a roster spot, and the team chose to waive him.

Now he’s on the Broncos practice squad. Payton spoke about the decision to add Perry, who he sees as a player with impressive physical gifts and plenty of skills to develop further.

“We had some exposure with him,” Payton said Friday. “I obviously wasn’t there, but Pete Carmichael (was). We noticed him in his rookie year last year on film… We weren’t going to claim him, but we sure would like to recruit him to come to the practice squad. He’s long with good hands.”

It should also be noted that former Saints assistant college scouting director Cody Rager was hired into Denver’s front office this offseason, and he was part of the decision to draft Perry a year ago.

Payton emphasized that they view Perry as a stash-and-develop signing, not someone likely to get thrown into  a game right away. He’s  a longshot to p lay against the Saints next Thursday night, but never say never. He learned Carmichael’s playbook as a rookie which is derived from Payton’s system. Perry may not need as much time to get up to speed as other players in his  position.

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Newly-signed Broncos practice squad WR reacts to being waived by Saints

Newly-signed Broncos practice squad wide receiver A.T. Perry reacts to being waived by Saints: ‘I was released just for them to bring another o-lineman in’

New Orleans Saints fans weren’t the only ones surprised to see A.T. Perry get waived last week. The wide receiver was blindsided, too. Perry signed with the Denver Broncos practice squad after clearing waivers, and the former sixth-round draft pick reacted with words of criticism upon being let go.

“It was kind of a shock that I was released just for them to bring another o-lineman in,” Perry told the Denver Post’s Parker Gabriel.

That lineman the Saints brought in was Connor McGovern, who played 24 snaps at center on Monday night against the Kansas City Chiefs after Lucas Patrick suffered a collarbone injury. When Patrick returned to the lineup in the second half, he went to left guard while McGovern remained at the pivot.

And those 24 snaps McGovern played were more than Perry totaled through the first four games this season. Obviously this was a disappointing turn of events, but the writing was on the wall when rookies like Mason Tipton and Bub Means were getting on the field and Perry wasn’t.

“It was kind of confusing for me,” Perry continued, speaking with Gabriel. “Just wanting to play in that offense — (Derek Carr) was throwing the ball around and I wanted to be part of that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. I was on the active roster but inactive (on game days) each week. They said it was my hand.”

Perry was listed with a hand injury on the injury report for the first two weeks, but minor ailments continued to trip him up after that. He was limited by an illness in Week 3 and a hamstring injury slowed him down in Week 4. Then he was let go.

So while injuries may have played a factor, the bigger issue was Perry’s poor performance at practice. He only caught one pass from Carr in team drills throughout all of training camp. When speaking about the decision to start Spencer Rattler this week while Carr is dealing with an injury, offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak may have inadvertently shared some insight to Perry’s situation: “I haven’t met a lot of gamers. Usually, what people do in practice is what they do in games.”

Good luck to Perry in Denver, where he’s reunited with Pete Carmichael and some other familiar faces. If he can quickly learn their playbook he might get on the field next Thursday when Sean Payton makes his return to New Orleans. No one questions his physical gifts and athletic talents. It’s just a shame he couldn’t put them to use in an offense lacking someone with his skills at wide receiver. It’s why the Saints are working so hard to trade for Davante Adams.

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Sean Payton’s Broncos poached another Saints player, and he didn’t even draft them

Sean Payton’s Broncos poached another former Saints player, and he didn’t even draft this one. A.T. Perry is going to Denver:

This is getting silly. Sean Payton’s Denver Broncos signed another former New Orleans Saints player, but he didn’t even draft this one. Wide receiver A.T. Perry signed with the Broncos practice squad on Tuesday, per NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill.

Perry had been waived after being a healthy scratch for each of the Saints’  first four games in 2024; they drafted him in the sixth round of the 2023  NFL draft, and he made some nice plays in spot duty during the second half of the season.

But he appeared to be a poor fit in Klint Kubiak’s offense and the Saints chose to let him go, though head coach Dennis Allen emphasized that the door was open for him to stick around. The Saints even opened a spot on their practice squad by promoting rookie guard Kyle Hergel to the 53-man roster on Monday.

But now Perry will be picking up a new playbook, or at least one similar to what he learned as a rookie. His former play caller Pete Carmichael is on staff with Payton in Denver as are some other familiar faces. And Saints fans  could see him as soon as next Thursday when Payton and the Broncos visit New Orleans for a prime-time game.

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PFF says Derek Carr’s late-season surge is cause for optimism in 2024

Pro Football Focus pointed to Derek Carr’s late-season surge as cause for optimism in 2024. No. 4 must pick up right where he left off for the Saints to find success:

It took some time for Derek Carr to find his bearings with the New Orleans Saints, but you can’t say the quarterback didn’t finish his 2023 season strong. A large part of that was due to change in practice habits. The Saints emphasized their red zone offense, somewhere Carr had always struggled, and by year’s end his teammate Demario Davis was boasting about Carr being the best red-zone passer in the league.

The team at Pro Football Focus was certainly impressed by his improvement. PFF’s Dalton Wasserman pointed to Carr’s progress as the biggest reason for optimism about the Saints’ chances in 2024:

Derek Carr’s Saints tenure got off to a rocky start, as he posted a mediocre 67.5 passing grade through his first 10 games. However, over his final seven games, he earned an 84.4 passing grade, the fifth-best mark in the NFL in that span, after developing better chemistry with Chris Olave. Olave posted his three highest receiving yardage totals within the final six weeks of the season.

The Saints will hope to ride that newfound chemistry, as well as one of the NFL’s best secondaries, to an NFC South title. The question will be whether they can hold up in the trenches on both sides of the ball. If they are at least competent there, especially in pass protection, they can return to the postseason following a three-year absence.

Of course things are different now. The offensive coordinator Carr was working with, Pete Carmichael, was fired and replaced by Klint Kubiak. He’s had to learn a new offense with different concepts and its own terminology. But the hope is for Kubiak’s system to work to Carr’s strengths, putting him in position to make more plays and experience fewer hurdles.

Everything rides on things going as planned. If Carr has another slow start and the Saints stumble out of the gate, they’re going to be in trouble. Missing the playoffs four years in a row when Dennis Allen was sold to fans as a coach who could guide the team to the postseason — with Carr, his handpicked $150 million quarterback, out in front — could be disastrous. Hopefully Kubiak’s offense is as strong a fit for Carr as the Saints envision. They can’t afford to find out that it isn’t.

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Only Derrick Henry has run against more 8-man boxes than Alvin Kamara since 2021

This is a big indictment of Pete Carmichael (and Sean Payton). Only Derrick Henry has run against more 8-man boxes than Alvin Kamara since 2021:

If it’s felt like everything has been hard for Alvin Kamara on rushing downs in recent years, you’d be right. It’s not enough for the porous New Orleans Saints offensive line to struggle in front of him. Kamara’s play callers have let him down, too, with predictable play designs clueing defenders in to their intentions.

Thanks to charting shared by Steve Palazzolo, head of football product at Pro Football Focus, we can see that just one running back has run against more boxes with eight or more defenders lined up than Kamara since 2021: Derrick Henry, who twice led the league in rushing yards with four seasons as the NFL’s leader in carries. Kamara hasn’t seen that kind of volume, but teams have still had a good idea of what’s happening when he touches the football.

This is a big indictment of Pete Carmichael (and Sean Payton). Kamara was once renowned for his versatility on both rushing and passing downs, and in a variety of formations. But all 11 defenders on the field and all 70,000 fans inside the Caesars Superdome could tell when the Saints were about to run Kamara up the middle and into the teeth of the defense, even when the numbers advantage wasn’t in his blockers’ favor.

Since 2021, Henry led the NFL with 373 carries against defenses with eight or more men in the box. Kamara was second with 226. Then you had Najee Harris and Christian McCaffrey (221), as well as Josh Jacobs and Nick Chubb (208). Carmichael has let Kamara down the last two years as his play caller, but Payton got lazy and uncreative with his run designs in 2021, too. He drew up the bad blueprint Carmichael tried to build off of.

Hopefully Klint Kubiak can succeed where they failed. The Saints brought him in to revitalize their run game, and the wide zone-heavy scheme he’s installed could be good for Kamara (as well as the other Saints running backs). Getting Kamara out in space with blockers ahead of him, as opposed to running into a defensive tackle’s face at the line of scrimmage, might be a better use of his abilities.

Obviously you can’t run outside zone on every play. There will be times when the Saints need a tough yard up the middle. But if Kubiak can just get Kamara into more favorable looks, it could make a huge difference. Right now Kamara has the team’s highest salary cap hit for 2024 at $18.5 million. Getting a better return on that investment by setting him up to win, not to fail, helps everyone.

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Saints to kick off 2024 preseason against Cardinals in Arizona

The New Orleans Saints will kick off their 2024 preseason against the Cardinals in Arizona:

Here’s some big New Orleans Saints news. Nola.com’s Jeff Duncan reports that the Saints will open their 2024 preseason with an exhibition game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium in Glendale. They’ll have joint practices with the San Francisco 49ers before traveling to Santa Clara’s Levi Stadium for their second preseason game.

It’s easy to get excited about the prospect of seeing star talents like Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray and wideout Marvin Harrison Jr., this year’s fourth overall draft pick, but we should remember that it’s preseason. Both teams may not play their starters for more than a single possession or two, if at all, especially in the first week.

But it would be nice to see the Saints get some experience in Klint Kubiak’s new offense right out of the gate. Derek Carr struggled in Pete Carmichael’s offense last season and played limited snaps in preseason, so it’s reasonable to think he could use the experience in a real game situation. There’s always a risk of injury, but that’s true even at practice. We’ll have to wait and see if the Saints take a different approach in hopes of starting faster this season.

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Klint Kubiak had the perfect answer about Saints’ future on offense

Few teams struggled to sustain drives like the Saints did last year. Klint Kubiak has a great plan for fixing what’s broken:

Few teams struggled to sustain drives or end them with touchdowns like the New Orleans Saints did last year. You’d be hard pressed to find more offenses that had as many run-run-pass-punt sequences or short field goal tries. So it’s reassuring to hear new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak share a great plan for fixing what’s broken:

Kubiak spoke with WWL Radio on Thursday evening in a wide-ranging interview, ostensibly for previewing the 2024 draft (which we transcribed here). But this was Kubiak’s first exposure to local media, and so he ended up revealing more than may have been expected. And when asked how he plans to improve the Saints offense on third downs and inside the red zone, he gave a perfect answer.

“Speaking first to the red zone, it’s not one thing, it’s being able to run the ball down there,” Kubiak began, “That’s having an identity in running the ball and having success on base downs in the red zone so you’re not getting into 3rd-and-6 from the 6 or 3rd-and-10 from the 10. That’s something Coach (Kyle) Shanahan really harped on with those guys.”

That’s the antithesis of Pete Carmichael’s strategy. Carmichael’s entire play calling approach was designed around playing for third downs in manageable situations: 3rd-and-4, 3rd-and-6, that sort of thing. A couple of short runs into the teeth of the defense and then a quick pass to (hopefully) move the change. But that’s a tough sell when runs are getting stuffed, passes are falling incomplete, and fans are seeing more of the kicking specialists than they ever planned for.

Avoiding third downs altogether with more success on early downs is key. And that’s where Kubiak wants the offense to go. He envisions a run-heavy offense that will set up Derek Carr for big gains off of play action passes, much like the one that his mentor Shanahan has spread around the league. But even the best-designed game plan will run into some snags.

Kubiak continued: “As far as third downs, you know, that’s a whole other set of deals. Its’ a team game and we had a lot of great players on offense. It all started with them. Having great protection up front. Good decision maker at quarterback, and weapons on the outside. It’s all about players and coaches having an organized plan for them.”

So that means the Saints will be leaning hard on their personnel to win their matchups on critical downs. But as Kubiak said, it’s also on coaching to put them in a position to succeed. Finding the right route combinations for Chris Olave and getting favorable mismatches for Alvin Kamara is on him and his staff. It’s a good plan. Now they need to execute it.

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Dennis Allen ranked worst among NFL’s returning head coaches

This isn’t a glowing endorsement for Dennis Allen. The New Orleans Saints head coach was ranked worst among the NFL’s returning coaches by NBC Sports:

This isn’t a glowing endorsement for Dennis Allen. The New Orleans Saints head coach was graded worst among his peers by NBC Sports analyst Patrick Daugherty, clocking in at the bottom of the offseason coach rankings — at least among returning head coaches. The eight first-year coaches were also ranked beneath Allen, but that’s because they’re all relatively unknown quantities.

Unfortunately for Allen, we know exactly what he is and where his shortcomings lie. We’ll let Daugherty explain why Allen was ranked at No. 24 among the 24 head coaches returning from 2023:

“We lost a lot of bad coaches last winter. Arthur Smith, Brandon Staley, Josh McDaniels and Ron Rivera send their regards. That means we are left with the merely mediocre to round out our list. No one is more committed to the bit than Dennis Allen. A defensive coordinator trapped in a head coach’s body, Allen has treated Sean Payton’s leftover offense like a museum heirloom that disintegrates if you touch it. This is an attack that hasn’t innovated in three years, right down to banging Alvin Kamara between the tackles for no reason and rushing Taysom Hill onto the field any time there’s a critical down. Well, it’s not entirely true there’s been no innovation. Allen has decided to find out just how boring Drew Brees-style quarterbacking can become. Andy Dalton pushed the envelope in 2022. Derek Carr reached new heights in 2023. Allen, who admittedly takes care of business on defense, has finally moved on from Payton Ball on offense but replaced it with … Kubiak Ball. Not Gary, but Klint. It’s a fine system in a vacuum. It’s also become mummified under Klint, with no new wrinkles inserted since the Peyton Manning days in Denver. Maybe 2023 49ers passing-game coordinator Klint learned something under coach Kyle Shanahan. That’s what the Saints’ season and Allen’s future employment hinges on: This old Kubiak dog picking up some new Shanahan tricks. I suppose there are worse plans, but I’m not seeing many for 2024.”

That uncalled-for shot at Taysom Hill aside — the Saints have used him on critical downs because he’s more reliable than anyone else, being one of 11 players in the NFL with a positive success rate as both a runner and receiver on 100-plus touches — this is a good assessment of the trouble the Saints have found themselves in.

Allen was either unable or unwilling to replace Pete Carmichael when it was clear he couldn’t call a functional offense in 2022, and he bet big on Derek Carr covering up Carmichael’s shortcomings in 2023. That’s a bet he lost, which is why the offensive coaching staff was overhauled from the top down.

Now Allen is gambling again, hoping that Kubiak will run an offense styled more strongly after Shanahan’s example than what we’ve seen when Kubiak called plays in the past. With the odds stacked against him, he has to be hoping for this plan to pay off.

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Saints sign a new fullback, but he isn’t new to their coaching staff

The Saints signed a new fullback, but he isn’t new to their coaching staff. Meet Zander Horvath:

The New Orleans Saints signed a new fullback, but he isn’t new to their coaching staff. Meet Zander Horvath, formerly of Purdue, whose addition was announced on Thursday’s update to the daily NFL transactions wire.

Horvath, 25, played college football at Purdue before turning pro with the Los Angeles Chargers, who picked him in the seventh round of the 2022 NFL draft. He measured out exceptionally well in the pre-draft process with a 9.83 Relative Athletic Score (a metric which often lines up with attributes the Saints value). He weighed in at 6-foot-2 and 228 pounds but has been listed at 232 and 235 with different teams.

Former Chargers running backs coach Derrick Foster worked with him closely in L.A., so there’s an obvious connection with Foster holding the same position on staff these days in New Orleans. Horvath was waived during roster cuts last August and briefly landed with the Pittsburgh Steelers, but the Chargers brought him back to their practice squad to close out the season. He wasn’t re-signed after that.

He wasn’t the only player the Saints tried out on Thursday; the wire also reports 232-pound running back Qadree Ollison as a participant. He’s a former Atlanta Falcons draft pick (fifth round in 2019) who was teammates with Horvath on the Steelers for a few months last season. The Saints must have liked what they saw from Horvath better.

This might mean the end of the road for Adam Prentice. The incumbent Saints fullback is a restricted free agent but he’s coming off a down year with dropped passes, blown blocking assignments, and a very unfortunate fumble. Offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is going to be asking different things of his fullback than Pete Carmichael asked of Prentice last season, so they might look for someone else to push Horvath for the job in training camp.

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