So much of the Saints’ offense over the last two seasons has come with a familiar script: Tyler Shough and Chris Olave bailing everybody out. Week 6 against the New York Giants looked different. For once, New Orleans didn’t need one or two stars to carry the whole operation, because the run game finally showed up in a real way.
The Saints pounded the ball 38 times for 175 yards in Versailles, France, and the production came in chunks. New Orleans posted six runs of 10 or more yards, with five of those explosions coming from Alvin Kamara, Kendre Miller and C.J.
Donaldson. That’s a notable jump from the first five weeks of the season, when Saints running backs had combined for only four runs of 10-plus yards.
The efficiency numbers weren’t spotless. New Orleans finished with a 37 % rushing success rate, which was actually a bit below its season average.
But the big-play element changed the feel of the night. The Saints were effective on both zone and gap scheme runs, and Shough added a little more as a runner too, finishing with five carries for 32 yards, his best rushing output of the season.
One detail stood out in a hurry: rookie guard Jeremiah Wright, who stepped in for the injured Cesar Ruiz, helped unlock things. All but one of those explosive runs came after Wright entered the game.
There’s another test coming quickly. New Orleans will get a shot to keep the ground game rolling against a Pittsburgh defense that has allowed at least four yards per carry in four of its six games this season.
The Saints did enough to win, but the ending got messy fast. They were holding a 34-10 lead when J.J.
McCarthy came in for Jameis Winston with about 11 minutes left, and what followed was a fourth-quarter surge that nearly turned the game upside down. McCarthy threw for 243 yards in the quarter, the fifth most by an NFL quarterback in NFL history.
He completed 11 passes in that stretch, and the yardage on those throws came in this sequence: 19, 27, 8, 49, 24, 11, 13, 46, 17, 20, 9. That works out to 22.1 yards per completion, the most by an NFL quarterback with at least 10 completions since Derek Carr put up the exact same line - 11 completions and 243 yards - for the Saints against the Cowboys in Week 2 of the 2024 season.
There was some bad luck in there for New Orleans. The biggest completion, a 49-yard strike to Charlie Jones, came on a 50-50 ball that Quincy Riley probably should have picked off.
Still, the larger issue was the Saints’ inability to get home. McCarthy had room to operate because New Orleans couldn’t create much pressure or consistently disrupt zone looks.
The Saints pressured him on just six of his 23 dropbacks.
That late rally also sharpened the focus for Week 7. The names that jump off the page in Pittsburgh are Aaron Rodgers and D.K.
Metcalf, but the Saints’ defensive priority should be Jaylen Warren. The Steelers running back enters the week with 460 rushing yards, seventh in the NFL, and his 5.5 yards per carry is behind only Kansas City’s Kenneth Walker and Atlanta’s Bijan Robinson.
New Orleans did show improvement against the run, but it still has work to do against elite backs. The Saints have allowed 21 runs of 10 or more yards this season, and only four teams in the league have given up more.
There were other wrinkles worth noting from the win. Donaldson isn’t Jahmyr Gibbs or Bijan Robinson, but he has given the Saints a different kind of spark.
Against New York, he broke off runs of 11 and 17 yards, and he now leads the team with a 4.8 yards-per-carry average on the season on 17 attempts. The downside came later, when his fumble with 9:03 remaining helped spark the Giants’ comeback.
Shough’s night wasn’t smooth from the start. He opened by completing only seven of his first 18 passes, a stretch that seemed to reflect both New York’s defense and some inconsistency from the quarterback.
There were missed chances too. Early in the first quarter, the Saints lined Olave up in the backfield and faked a screen on a sharp call that got the Giants to bite, leaving Devaughn Vele wide open down the right sideline for what looked like a gain of 20 or more yards.
Shough overshot it. New Orleans receivers also dropped two passes, and Giants rookie linebacker Arvell Reese blew up a pair of screen passes on his own.
Shough did settle in. Starting with his fourth-down touchdown to Bryce Lance, he completed nine passes in a row, and that stretch helped steady an offense that had spent much of the afternoon proving it could win with the run - and then almost gave the whole thing back.
In Other News...
Saints Win Turned On One Offensive Choice And Two Huge Defensive Plays
The Saints found a way to steady themselves after an early hole at MetLife Stadium, leaning on a mix of timely offense and dependable kicking to keep the Giants from fully separating. New Orleans answered the opening punch with touchdowns from Tyler Shough and Jameis Winston, while Daniel Carlsons field goals helped keep the pressure on a New York team that kept finding answers of its own.
The turning point came when the defense started changing possessions, with interceptions by Martin Emerson Jr. and Julian Blackmon giving New Orleans extra chances in a game that had already swung back and forth. Once those takeaways arrived, the Saints were able to keep pushing the pace and protect a lead that held up through the end. [Read more 🡒]
Saints Just Saw How Messy The Giants Backfield Has Become
The Giants backfield has taken another turn, and for a Saints team that already had a close eye on the NFC landscape, it is the kind of roster shuffle that stands out. New York is now down to Cam Skattebo, Tyrone Tracy and Devin Singletary in the running back room, a group that has been in flux as the Giants continue to sort out how they want to distribute touches.
Najee Harris had been part of that mix until the latest change, even after the Giants made some unusual calls with his usage in recent weeks. His role had already been in question after Week 6, when the workload never matched what many expected, and the move leaves even more uncertainty around how the Giants plan to handle the position going forward. [Read more 🡒]
Saints Game Just Intensified The Giants J.J. McCarthy Debate
Adam Thielen said the mood inside the Giants locker room was buoyed by J.J. McCarthys fourth-quarter surge against the Saints, even though the comeback effort came in a loss. McCarthy was making his first real impression after landing in New York from Minnesota, and for a stretch he looked every bit like a quarterback who could change the conversation around a team searching for a reset.
For New Orleans, the bigger issue is how quickly McCarthy turned a late, lopsided game into something worth dissecting. Thielen pointed to the reaction around the Giants after McCarthy stepped in for Jameis Winston and suddenly energized the offense, a reminder that one strong finish can ripple well beyond the final score and fuel an already uncomfortable debate about what comes next. [Read more 🡒]