New Orleans won this 24-17 with a running game that averaged 2.4 yards a carry. Twenty-seven carries, 65 yards, split between Tyler Shough, Travis Etienne Jr., Alvin Kamara and CJ Donaldson. The Saints scored 24 points anyway, and that gap between how they moved the ball and how they scored is the whole story.
Shough was the offense. He went 27-of-34 for 252 yards, 7.4 per attempt, one touchdown, zero interceptions, a 107.4 passer rating and an 81.5 QBR, and he took three sacks for 19 lost yards. Baltimore never took the ball away from him. This was a quarterback win bolted onto a broken run game, and New Orleans should treat it as the former. The inability to run is not a quirk of one afternoon. Kamara carried nine times for 15 yards, 1.7 a pop. Etienne got eight carries for 25. Shough's nine carries produced 23 and his longest run of the day was 11 yards. When your quarterback is your second-leading rusher and the punt team's best friend is your own ground game, the passing chart has to carry everything.
The winning score fit the theme. Shough went up the middle for 1 yard with 1:28 left, the replay official reviewed whether the runner broke the plane, and the ruling on the field was upheld. Daniel Carlson's extra point made it 24-17. A goal-line sneak by the quarterback, not a back, is what a team without a functional run game looks like in the red zone.
What actually worked through the air was distribution. Chris Olave caught 8 of 10 targets for 86 yards and the passing touchdown. Devaughn Vele caught 5 of 7 for 64. Juwan Johnson caught 4 for 66, 16.5 a reception, with a 25-yard long. Kamara's five catches went for 7 total yards, 1.4 per reception on six targets. Those checkdowns were dead ends, which is another way of saying the screens and swings weren't blocking for anybody either.
Pete Werner did the dirty work: 11 tackles, 8 solo, a sack, a tackle for loss and a quarterback hit. Kaden Elliss added 6 tackles and two quarterback hits, Carl Granderson 5 tackles with a tackle for loss, Danny Stutsman 4 tackles. Baltimore sacked Shough three times, and New Orleans still won because the Ravens could not turn pressure into takeaways until the final twenty seconds.
That final sequence is the game. With 0:20 left, Lamar Jackson went deep left for Rashod Bateman and J. Blackmon intercepted at the New Orleans 7, returning it to the 9 for 2 yards with Bateman making the tackle. End game at 0:00. Baltimore was a touchdown and an extra point from tying. It never got the snap. Jackson appears in the Baltimore leader group for both passing and rushing, Bateman for receiving, with Derrick Henry and Justice Hill in the rushing group. When a quarterback is the passing leader and the rushing leader, the offense is one man and one throw, and the last throw went to the wrong jersey.
My read: the Saints are 1-1 with a win they cannot repeat. Reviewed goal-line sneaks get upheld and desperation heaves get intercepted at the 7, and both breaks landed New Orleans' way in the same fourth quarter. At 2.4 yards a carry, Shough will be asked to throw 34 times a week, and the margin for those breaks disappears. New Orleans' run game costs it a game before October is out.
