What the New Orleans Saints’ offense needs to do against the Falcons

What must the New Orleans Saints offense do to clinch the NFC South in Week 13?

Going into their week 10 matchup the Falcons’ defense had gotten consistently steamrolled by opposing offenses. In the four games prior to the week 10 game, the Falcons had given up 53 to the Texans, 34 to the Cardinals, 37 to the Rams, and 24 points in the first half to the Seahawks. However, the Falcons were able to turn things around against the New Orleans Saints in week 10.

How will things go this time around?

One of the main problems for the Falcons’ defense was a lack of communication and cohesiveness among their secondary. This led to them consistently giving up big plays because of busted coverages.

Prior to week 10, Dan Quinn, the Falcons’ head coach, made multiple adjustments in order to extend his lifespan in Atlanta.

The most important of these adjustments was shifting erstwhile WR coach Raheem Morris to DB coach. Morris had previous experience on the defensive side of the ball so it was a logical move. Pass coverage is strongly correlated to pass rush, i.e if the QB can consistently pass to his first read the rush won’t be able to get home.

This was the primary reason why the Falcons had only seven sacks going into the week 10 game. They had six in just that one Week 10 game.

According to my analysis, four of those six were due to Brees having to go through his progressions and there were a couple where he was locked onto his target but pulled out, giving time for the Falcons pass rushers to get home.

The Falcons played a lot of man coverage throughout the game, which gave Thomas a lot of one-on-one opportunities. The second-year CB Isaiah Oliver was tasked with following Thomas for most of the game.

This inevitably didn’t work out well for the Falcons as Thomas put up 13 catches and 152 yards.

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If the Falcons cover Thomas in the same way, expect him to put up another dominant performance.

The Falcons use cover six relatively frequently.

Cover six is a zone coverage with has one deep defender covering half of the field and two other deep defenders who collectively cover the other half of the field. Cover six allows you to be more flexible as you could possibly play man on Thomas’ side of the field with the half field defender over the top acting as help for the CB covering Thomas.

The Falcons use a lot of diamond fronts in passing situations. Diamond fronts consist of having five defenders threatening to rush. Diamond fronts pretty much force the O-line to block each defender 1-on-1.

The Falcons generally use Deion Jones as the extra guy that lines up on or near the defensive line. As Jones is a good coverage linebacker they sometimes drop him back into coverage. Having him align as a pass rusher forces the O-line to take him into account. So by dropping back, he can mess with their protection call.

Erik McCoy, the Saints’ rookie center, will have a big role to play in pass protection, and he will also have to block the very good Grady Jarrett pretty regularly. Thus, I think McCoy is the most important player for the Saints’ offense this week.

In their week 5 matchup against the Texans, the Falcons had a lot of problems covering the Texans’ tight end Jordan Akins. I expect Jared Cook to be left one-on-one for most of the game, and thus I expect him to continue his breakout.