Dave Helman on what about the Saints most excites him: My enthusiasm is slightly dampened by the Jordyn Tyson situation, but even still, it’s Year 2 of Tyler Shough, and the Saints have done a remarkable job of improving the supporting cast around him. Getting Travis Etienne in there at the price that they did was great. I don’t know if he’s going to change the game for the New Orleans Saints, but it is much better than what they’ve had.
Taliese Fuaga, Brandon (Thorn from “Trench Warfare”) has him ranked 20th among 32 right tackles heading into Year 3. Kelvin Banks comes in at 18th out of 40 left tackles after one season. They paid a premium for David Edwards, but he is a top-10 guard. Erik McCoy, top-five center when healthy, which, please God. And even Cesar Ruiz, who probably gets the least amount of pub among this offensive line, was the ninth-best right guard among 34 ranked. The potential is here for this to be a kick-ass unit.
Derrik Klassen on what he’s watching the first month of the season: I’m watching the defense. We’ve mentioned it a number of times this offseason. Towards the back half of the year, the Saints defense was really good. They were third in EPA per play. When you bring in a new play caller, it (can) take them half the year to really get going. And I think that you really saw Brandon Staley’s defense start to come into its own.
At the same time, I think that this is often a style of defense that is really dependent on what the spine of the defense looks like. You now lose Demario Davis, who was really the heart and soul of this defense through multiple iterations, whether it was with Staley or beforehand with Dennis Allen, and you lose Alontae Taylor, who I think was a pretty good nickel player for them. So these players that were in the middle of your defense and allowing you to do certain things, they’re just going to get different bodies there. And that’s where I think it’s hard to paste on what they did last year to what it might be.
Robert Mays on what’s keeping him up at night: This is a team where you’re looking at the best-case scenario, and it’s so tempting to envision and talk about the best-case scenario. We spent 10 minutes at the beginning discussing the improvements in the supporting cast and the infrastructure around Tyler Shough. What if that just never happens? What if we never get that version of the offense? No Tyson. Erik McCoy’s played 14 games combined in the last two seasons. And I don’t want to face this reality because I loved watching him healthy last year, but Chris Olave has not had a clean bill of health very often throughout his career. And so are we going to be at a place where we’re looking at this offense in Week 12 and there are four or five important pieces missing? You could play this game for every single team. The idea of injuries keeping me up at night. I think it’s a little bit more fitting to have that conversation about this team, considering the point they’re starting from.