The city of New Orleans is known for their festive, jazzy funeral marches. It's a shame they couldn't strike up the band for last night's home throttling at the hands of Sean Payton's upstart Broncos, since it might have helped distract from the funerary procession the Saints seem to be embarking upon. One thing's for sure: we appear to have jinxed ourselves with last week's praise of the recent run of Thursday Night matchups.
QUARTERBACKS
Despite a thoroughly lackluster group of receivers (amazingly, only one Denver wideout is on pace to top 350 yards receiving in 2024; none are on pace to top 700), Bo Nix has stabilized in impressively short order as 'the guy' for Sean Payton's Broncos. What looked like a sensible pairing on paper - Nix excelled on short area, high percentage throws at Oregon, one of the foremost prerequisites for Payton's quarterbacks - has looked like an even more natural fit in the offing. In very agreeable game script, Nix continued doing what he's been doing all season: hitting his marks on quick-hitters for middling gains and keeping the offense on schedule and on the field... with some rookie head-scratchers mixed in, of course. The numbers haven't always been there (and they mostly weren't last night, for lack of need), and the passing numbers haven't been there at all, but Nix simply oozes moxie and confidence and all the other 'intangibles' adjectives we like to dispense.
Nix is no more than a dicey streaming option in redraft leagues this year; he's on pace for 12 touchdowns and barely 3,000 yards passing, so if you start him you're basically banking on rushing production (he's on pace for a tidy 620 yards and 7 scores on the ground). But in an NFL landscape where precious few players can claim to have true long-term security, Nix owners in dynasty leagues should be beaming: better days are most definitely ahead for this Nix-Payton battery.
The outlook for Spencer Rattler is obviously a good deal murkier. Once heralded as the Next Great Sooner signal-caller after following a string of excellent ones in Jalen Hurts, Kyler Murray and Baker Mayfield in Norman, it's been a rough road to the bigs for the former five-star recruit. While he was taken a whopping 138 picks later, Rattler was the next quarterback selected in April's draft after the Broncos grabbed Nix, and considering both players transferred from prestigious programs to somewhat less-accomplished ones during their collegiate careers some comparisons were at least understandable. But while Nix has come into the NFL with polish and landed with a very QB-friendly head coach, Rattler came in with plenty of 'untapped potential' and lands as something like the maybe-successor to Derek Carr, currently on the shelf with an oblique tear (yipe!). With Carr's contract unpleasant but not impossible for long-time Saints GM Mickey Loomis to move on from in the spring, this did qualify as an opportunity for Rattler to compel the Saints to at least start planning around him.
Unfortunately for him, he's been sabotaged by circumstance in truly brutal fashion: Gone for last night's action were his top two receivers in Chris Olave (concussion) and Rashid Shaheed (meniscus, now out for season), replaced by a Day 3 rookie wide receiver and an UDFA rookie that I touched on a couple months ago. So, take that, combine it with the Broncos' ferocious young defense and sprinkle in a bevy of injuries on the offensive line and you get exactly what you'd expect. Rattler's 25-for-35 effort for 172 scoreless yards and an in the air fumble-six by Denver's Cody Barton was at least a commendable effort, if a largely fruitless one; Rattler spent his Thursday night under constant, screaming pressure from a truly relentless Denver pass rush. It was all he could do to get the ball to the second-stringers on short gains, typically short of the sticks.
People are going to be focusing on the Saints dropping from 2-0 to 2-5 over the next few days, and while that is true as far as it goes this game felt a little like the fight going out of the team. The Saints played the Eagles and Falcons tough in close losses, but these last three losses have felt different. With Carr unlikely to be ready to suit up next week and second-year man Jake Haener leading the offense to their only touchdown of the night late in the fourth quarter, Rattler is no sure thing to start next week... when the Saints will get another tough draw in the Chargers.
RUNNING BACKS
The Broncos following up an 0-2 start with this 4-1 stretch they're currently on has largely coincided with Javonte Williams' reassertion of control over this backfield. After grinding to a measly 52 yards rushing on 24 carries across the first three games of the season, Williams is something of a new man ever since: he's crossed 80 total yards and 4.7 yards per carry in three of his last four games. What had been missing were the touchdowns, but Williams finally broke through last night, finding paydirt from eight and five yards out and accounting for the game's only offensive touchdowns in the first 58 and a half minutes to pair with 111 total yards and a sterling 6.3ypc clip. The Broncos seem to have found a recipe for winning, and that recipe has Williams as a central ingredient on the offensive side. Even more encouraging for Javonte owners, the threat from second-year speedster Jaleel McLaughlin looks to have abated (four carries on a season-low 22% snap count last night), and rookie battering ram Audric Estime fumbled late in mop-up duty to help facilitate New Orleans' lone touchdown. Williams has pulled clear of the pack and can safely be started every week until further notice.
Where in the wide world of sports was Alvin Kamara last night? That's the question squeezing its way in between more colorful language from fantasy owners far and wide after last night's baffling usage that saw the vet run the ball only seven times in a game where the Saints were so acutely short-handed. It won't be much of a comfort to the owners that it hung out to dry, but in hindsight this decision did perhaps make a measure of sense: with the interior of the offensive line ravaged by injuries (as has become tradition in New Orleans) and the Bronco defensive front playing as well as any in the league, OC Klint Kubiak seemed to opt not to put the already banged up Kamara more directly in harm's way, opting to let the talented-when-available Kendre Miller (six carries for 36 yards) and hardy veteran Jamaal Williams process more of the tough running in this one. But Kamara owners needn't panic, as there's no RBBC breaking out here anytime soon... that is, so long as Kamara remains a Saint.
WIDE RECEIVERS
It was a strange evening for the Broncos' pass-catching hierarchy. Courtland Sutton, their only remotely fantasy-relevant wideout from the moment Sean Payton came to town last winter, fell down the mineshaft in a big way; zero for zero on zero. And while the Broncos leading for 54 minutes and change certainly played a part, Sutton was still out there for 86% of their offensive plays and ran routes on 70% of them. Probably just a weird night in an unexpectedly noncompetitive game, but considering that this true goose egg came on the same night as rookie/Bo Nix #1 receiver at Oregon Troy Franklin 'broke out' for modest new career-highs across the board (6 targets, 5 receptions, 50 yards, 31.7% air yards share) there is suddenly a jolt of intrigue as to the exact nature of this pecking order going forward. Franklin's on the radar in deeper leagues.
The Bub Means Show that last night was billed to be disappointed all in attendance, including my podcasting partner (sorry Colt, Bub did not 'mean' business). Despite hefty 89% snap and 87.5% route participation rates in line with true number one receiver usage, and the Broncos being short their top cover man with Patrick Surtain II out for a second consecutive game, the intriguing Means could muster only three catches for 37 yards. Not his fault, the Saints were in the express lane to Nowheresville all game long; prime Joe Horn probably wouldn't have cracked 75 yards if he'd been a Saint last night. But with the Saints poised to possibly shift into player evaluation mode in the weeks ahead and the Rashid Shaheed role in Kubiak's offense now vacant, Mason Tipton's usage last night definitely got my attention. Undrafted out of the Ivy League, Tipton was the talk of Saints camp in July before a strained hamstring put him on the shelf for basically all of August. For 99% of UDFAs that would have spelled certain doom, but the Saints apparently thought so much of Tipton that they carried him on the 53-man roster out of camp really solely on the strength of his spring OTAs and a week and a half of training camp action; that alone is noteworthy to me.
With Shaheed's team-leading 40 targets now up for grabs, Tipton seemed to step into that role: his nine targets easily led all receivers, and his 43.3% air yardage share is the kind of involvement that fantasy managers have to covet (for context, D.K. Metcalf and Nico Collins are at 42.5 and 42.6% air yard shares on the season). We're definitely still deep in 'grain of salt' territory here, but for one game the Saints showed us Means as the direct backup to Chris Olave and Tipton as the direct backup to Shaheed - and Shaheed's not coming back this year. Tipton's definitely on the radar going forward.
Did you know Cedrick Wilson was on the Saints? Don't feel bad, most didn't. On a night where Spencer Rattler was largely forbidden from working the ball down the field by the rush, it was the veteran slot man that stepped up to process the checkdowns to the tune of 57 yards on six receptions. Personally, I wouldn't make too much of this; Rattler logged a lot of second-team reps over the summer, which meant building some quick chemistry with Means and Wilson. I think the return of either Olave or Carr pushes Wilson right back off of the fantasy radar, one he's already only on the very outermost edges thereof. Don't chase the PPR bait here guys.
TIGHT ENDS
Perhaps as tribute to the downtrodden nature of the position writ large, the tight ends for both teams managed somewhere between diddly and squat last night. Subbing in for the oft-injured Greg Dulcich, the former Saint Lucas Krull was the top-performing tight end of the night, needing only his three catches for 41 yards to claim that dubious honor. Fellow former Saint Adam Trautman out-snapped Krull but couldn't corral any of his three targets. Maybe that's why he's a blocking tight end.
With the Saints missing their top two wide receivers and Alvin Kamara mysteriously quasi-absent, you would be forgiven for assuming that Juwan Johnson took up at least some of that slack - especially considering that TE/RB/FB/QB/folk hero Taysom Hill was also unavailable last night, owing to a cracked rib or two. And while the Saints did try to get Johnson involved (season-high six targets), there was just no time for the Saints to let plays develop more than a few yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and they only sniffed the redzone twice. All work and no chances for jump ball touchdowns make Juwan a dull play. Backup tight end/New Orleans native Foster Moreau once again had the better showing, converting on both of his targets for 38 yards. Having caught an amazing 32 of his 37 targets since beating a lymphoma diagnosis and signing with his hometown team last summer, Moreau sure seems to be deserving of more than the two or three looks per game he's currently seeing - perhaps this cavalcade of injuries will result in more opportunities for him in the weeks ahead.
—Luke Wilson