Mouton, LeCompte: Saints couldn't ask for a better start to the season

Well, you couldn't ask for a better start to the season for the New Orleans Saints. Like Min, I'm Ricardo lecomte. We're gonna kind of break down this 4710 win for the Saints over the Panthers two things, I'm gonna take away from this game. One, the Panthers are not a good football team and we can see that both offensively and defensively. They've got issues and they've got a lot of problems to address. But two in the same vein, if you're the Saints, you still have to go out and execute. This is the first time that you've debuted this offense. So it's, you still have to make plays and execute and they did and to this defense did its job. They made Bryce Young's day of rough to say the least and they look good. Your thoughts of, of what we saw today on this field with the Saints and how they dominate. Yeah. Well, look from an offensive standpoint, I think you have to start on offense because we expected the Saints defense to be good. They may not be this good every week, but we expected them to be good and they were good. That's not a surprise. We didn't know what we're gonna get in the offense and what we got was terrific. And what happened today is we saw all the things we've seen, all training camp, not in the preseason games and not all the time, but they ran a ton of Derek Carr, uh rolling out. He said he's never played out of the pocket in his life more than this game and he said he loved it. We saw a ton of the running game. Saints ran the ball for 100 and 80 yards. That doesn't happen in the NFL very often. And I thought Clint Kubiak was totally on point on third down. His third down calls were excellent. He hit the Panthers guessing Eric mccoy in the locker room, a single favorite, single sound bite from any player in the locker room. He said, Clint Kuppi on third down. Kiss, kiss. That's all he did. And, and he, and he's 100% right. Look, there was one, there was a third and seven in the first half where the Saints did a quick pitch to Alvin Kamara behind Trevor Penning who kicked out and knocked out the cornerback. Kamara got the first down easy and I remember thinking at that time and I wrote it down. It's like this is unbelievable how off balance he has them. And this was a great day for Clint Kubiak and the whole offense and I think that's why you have to start in an evaluation this game. Yeah. Right. And, and remember we talked about this offense and the key to really establishing anything that Clint Kubiak wants to do is establishing the run. So 4.9 yards per carry for this team, they were able to establish the run. We knew we had questions going into this game about this offensive line, three new starters for, for the most part, they were able to hold up and actually look more aggressive against this Panthers defensive front to establish that run. I also like as in that same day, talking about Klin Kubiak, the aggressiveness he was calling the first touchdown was on the 3rd and 4th and they go deep and hit Rashid Shaheed on a long touchdown. There, there was something about just, you know, even though this is the first time Pauling plays in an NFL game, Clint Kubiak seems to have a AAA mastery almost of what he wanted to do and granted part of it is because of the opponent he's playing, but he knew what he wanted to do. Establish the run, make things easier for Derek Carr, make sure that these playmakers score, five different Saints score touchdowns, everything that you wanted ideally to see out there you saw from this offense. Yeah, five plays in he throws long and, and it was a perfect, it does seem like Clint Kupiec has a good handle too on what his guys can do. We're seeing Tatom Hill in more of a variety of roles which all he can do, he had his offensive linemen, which we have questioned all camp. He had them on the move more and they played well. And look, Derek Carr throws a beautiful deep ball. It's the one part of his arsenal that has always been elite is his ability to go deep. He had him do it right off the bat and that one pass to rashid, he set up so much confidence and I think everything built coming off of that. Yeah, it's something that the Saints hopefully can carry into game two against a tougher test in the Dallas Cowboys on the road. So I don't know if they're gonna score on their first nine possessions like the Saints have to open the season. But still if you're Saints fan, enjoy this win because again, if you're gonna complain about all the bad stuff that happens in the Saints, especially from last season, you got to relish and enjoy the good times. And right now that was some, that was some fun football to watch here on Sunday and a few like a few other notes, Aloe Taylor's blitzing ability, the, the, the, the number of turnovers that your secondary caused, which is what you need out of them. And then Blake Groupie four for four with two of them beyond 51 and 57. That is a, that is a spectacular day from your kicker you got and, and you had a, a block punt and a punt return that was almost for a touchdown. This was across the board. Unbelievably good. You do have to remember against New England last year, the Saints had one of these kind of games. You don't wanna get too confident one game against a bad team, but you just said it, enjoy this one. It was a beautiful win, enjoy. And again, we don't know the, the true identity of the Saints team yet. We kind of know Carolina probably isn't gonna be one of the best teams in the NFL. Maybe they may be the worst. But again, enjoy it because you're not gonna have many wins that look like this, especially with all three phases, clicking and certainly the Saints started 2024 with a big win over the Panthers. That's doug mow and Ricardo Lecomte reporting inside the Caesars Superdome.