Tyler Shough threw for 410 yards in Detroit and nearly won, and our model doubled the Saints' playoff odds without moving the record
Updated
The boldest part of our July preview was an aggressive projection for a young quarterback with a thin track record, and we said time would tell whether that faith was earned. Week 1 told us something. Tyler Shough went 35 of 56 for 410 yards and three touchdowns in Detroit, Chris Olave caught ten passes for 182, and the Saints took a thirteen-win team to overtime before losing 31-30. When we re-ran the season with that game seeded in, New Orleans came out at 8-9, exactly the record we had in the summer, but the playoff chance climbed from 23 percent to 34 and the offense that graded 17th in July now projects among the top eight in football for yardage. The record is the same. The team underneath it looks better.
Shough's projection climbed, and it climbed on evidence rather than hope. Our model now has him at 4,892 yards and 28 touchdowns against 14 interceptions behind a passer rating of 96, up from the 4,493 yards and 25 scores we projected in July. That is a big line for a young passer, and in the summer we flagged it as the single biggest reason to be skeptical of the projection. After watching him throw for 410 against a defense we graded second in the league, the skepticism has less to stand on. He threw two interceptions and took five sacks, which is the rookie part. He also kept pace with Jared Goff for four quarters and an overtime, which is the part the model cares about.
Olave is the centerpiece, and the model now treats him like one of the best receivers in football. His projection jumped from 106 catches and 1,412 yards to 125 catches for 1,821 yards and nine touchdowns, which would be the most receiving yards of any player in our numbers. Devaughn Vele caught seven balls for 69 and a score in Detroit and climbs from 30 catches to 62. Juwan Johnson holds at 64 catches and eight touchdowns at tight end. Barion Brown emerges at 47 catches. Travis Etienne Jr. carries the ground game at 711 yards. The offense projects for 364 points, 16th in the league, which undersells a passing game that just did what it did in Detroit, and the eighth-most yards, which does not.
The defense is the drag, and it still is. Our model projects New Orleans allowing 363 points, 16th in the league, and generating fewer than 39 sacks, 25th in football, with fewer than ten interceptions. Carl Granderson got to Goff once and projects for nine sacks on the season. Chase Young, who the model has for 12 games, adds seven. Cameron Jordan sat out the opener with a hamstring. Demario Davis is still the emotional core. But this is a unit without the horses to consistently get stops, and the reason the Saints lost in Detroit is that they gave up 31, not that they failed to score.
That is the shape of the projection. A passing game that can trade blows with anyone and a defense that has to be outscored, which is a recipe for shootouts, and shootouts are coin flips. When we ran the rest of the season New Orleans won more of them than it did in July, which is the extra eleven points of playoff probability, and lost enough of them to land at 8-9, which is the record.
The division keeps the ceiling in reach. Atlanta lost in Pittsburgh with its third quarterback and slid to ten wins in our projection. Carolina gave up 59 to Chicago and fell to six. Tampa Bay lost in Cincinnati and projects for five. When we ran the rest of the season, New Orleans finished second in the NFC South more often than any other spot, and the two Atlanta games, with a healthy Penix on one side and a suddenly credible Shough on the other, are the ones that decide whether eight wins is a floor or a ceiling.
The market opened New Orleans around seven and a half wins, and in July our model sat a fraction above it. Now we sit half a win above, still within the range where the model and the market are looking at the same team. This is not a bold disagreement. It is a projection that just watched its most aggressive assumption hold up for a week and moved its confidence rather than its number.
The path past our number runs entirely through the quarterback, as it did in July, and after Week 1 that path is wider. If Shough is what he looked like in Detroit, the Saints have enough at receiver to push toward nine or ten wins and the wild card race. The path below it is the defense giving out, which is exactly what it did at the end of the Detroit game. Both are live. The model splits them a little more toward the first than it did in the summer.
The next month is a fair test of whether Detroit was the arrival or the exception. New Orleans goes to Baltimore in Week 2 against the second-best scoring defense in football, hosts Las Vegas, then gets Atlanta at home in the first division game of the year and Minnesota in Week 5. When we ran that stretch, the Saints were favored against the Raiders and Minnesota, a modest underdog to Atlanta, and a clear underdog in Baltimore, which is a 2-2 month and a record near .500 entering October. The Atlanta game is the one that matters. If Shough can do to the Falcons what he did to the Lions, the division is a two-team race and the eight-win projection is a floor.
So the read on New Orleans is a young, pass-first team that grades better than its reputation and just showed why. Eight wins is the honest number on a roster with this defense. The playoff odds say the model is warming to the idea that the offense can carry it. Watch Shough and Olave, because after one week that connection looks like the real thing.
