Demario Davis and the New Orleans Saints defensive line are under pressure more than any group on defense. The New York Giants like to spread you out more than any team in the NFL. Expect a heavy dosage of run in these situations from both Cam Skattebo and Jaxson Dart.
The Giants saw Malik Nabers unfortunately go down with a torn ACL last week. It’ll be hard to replace Nabers’ production in the passing game, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Giants put more emphasis on Dart and Skattebo in the run game against the New Orleans Saints.
No team uses spread formation more than the Giants at 39.7 percent of snaps. Their usage has dropped in the last two weeks, but they had their most successful rushing day out of this formation in Dart's first start last week. This formation will often take Pete Werner off the field or out of the box giving New York another advantage.
The Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo prototypes are two of the Saints biggest challenges
New Orleans has been decent at stopping the run in terms of yards per carry and yards allowed, but it’s hard to call them stout. The biggest issue they’ve had is finishing the play. Missed tackles have plagued them all season. You can't be a team that misses tackles and be confident you'll stop Skattebo. He breaks tackles on a consistent basis, and the Saints miss them consistently. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
With the Giants tendency to use spread formation, there will be less players in the box to stop the run. The defensive front can't get pushed back constantly. It'll be on them to stand their ground, or even better, get off blocks. If the defensive line allows for offensive linemen to get to the second level quickly it's going to be a long day for the Saints. Ideally, the defensive front keeps the linebackers clean enough to go make plays.
Another issue is stopping the quarterback run. You could marry the issues and point to Josh Allen's monster run from just last week. Not only was that a quarterback running, he was running through tacklers as well. We've seen Mac Jones look athletic when running against this defense. He shook Pete Werner out of his shoes.
It may not be consistent runs throughout the game, but the Saints are allowing quarterbacks to run when it's needed the most, such as third downs. Both of these issues become more prevalent when the defense is spread out.