Canal Street Chronicles
The Saints open their season at home against the Panthers this Sunday.
We’ve finally made it. It is game week for the New Orleans Saints. In a few days, they will open their season in the Superdome against the Carolina Panthers as they look to start 1-0 for the sixth consecutive season.
Today, we’re going to dive into how the Saints offense matches up with the Panthers defense, which ranked 29th in points per game allowed last season, giving up 24.5 to their opponents each week.
First, let’s talk about some of the additions both teams made this season. The Saints won’t have RT Ryan Ramzcyk or OG Andrus Peat this year. They also lost Michael Thomas and Jimmy Graham in the passing game. However, they tried to beef up their offensive line by bringing in rookie LT Taliese Fuaga and have added guys like Cedric Wilson and Bub Means to their passing attack. Overall, the offense looks pretty similar to last year’s unit.
On the other side, the Panthers defense is going to look quite different than the one we saw in 2023. They made a ton of additions in free agency, signing guys such as Jadeveon Clowney, Jordan Fuller, A’Shawn Robinson and others, but they did lose their best pass rusher in Brian Burns to a trade with the Giants and one of the top corners in Donte Jackson.
The Saints are hoping that new offensive coordinator, Klint Kubiak, can bring some new life to a Saints offense that was quite boring last season. There were lots of three-and-outs, very little pre-snap motion and a whole bunch of second-and-ten run plays.
Like I said earlier, the Saints look relatively similar on offense. Derek Carr still leads the charge and retains his two top targets in Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed, as well as tight end Juwan Johnson. The Saints were open in saying they didn’t unleash their full playbook in the preseason, and we better hope that’s true because outside of one drive, they didn’t look all that inspiring.
In the pass game, the Saints better hope to find some success against Carolina. Outside of Jaycee Horn, nobody in their secondary worries me too much. Troy Hill is a solid nickel option, but he allowed 64% of his targets to be caught for 377 yards and four touchdowns in 2023. Opposite of Horn, Mike Jackson - who played for Seattle last year - will likely start. He played 282 snaps last season and surrendered a 69% completion percentage and 262 yards.
Horn will likely follow Olave, which should be a fun matchup to watch, so they’ll likely need to see guys like Shaheed, Wilson, Means and A.T. Perry to step up and make some big plays in this one.
On the ground, things should be a lot different than last year’s two matchups. The Saints averaged over 4.3 yards per carry in both of their wins against the Panthers last year, which were two of their best games...
