Realistic expectations for the Saints 2024 offense

The New Orleans Saints are going to have a brand-new offensive scheme in 2024. After 15 seasons of Pete Carmichael as offensive coordinator, the Saints have made a change, hiring former San Fransisco 49ers Passing Game Coordinator, Klint Kubiak, as their newest OC.

Kubiak has a long history with the game of football. His father Gary was a Super Bowl winning Head Coach, so he grew up around the game. After playing safety at Colorado State, Klint took a job at Texas A&M as the offensive quality control coach and graduate assistant. From there, he moved to his first NFL job with the Minnesota Vikings as their offensive quality control coach.

After a few years in Minnesota and a brief stop in Kansas, Kubiak went to Denver to be the Broncos offensive assistant under his father in 2016. Three seasons later, he’d return to Minnesota as their quarterbacks coach before getting his first shot at being an offensive coordinator with the Vikings in 2021. They finished 13th in the league in points per game that season, but he and the majority of the Vikings coaching staff were released after an 8-9 season. He went back to Denver, then to San Fransisco as a passing game coordinator before the Saints came calling this offseason. Now, he has his second shot at being an offensive coordinator.

The Saints offense was not where it needed to be last season, but now it is Kubiak’s job to turn things around. So, what can we expect with the Saints offense in 2024?

Well, from his one year as offensive coordinator with the Vikings, we know he loves to throw the ball. The Vikings had 604 pass attempts to 449 rushing attempts. There, he had Kirk Cousins, someone who I believe is a top-12 quarterback in the league. He threw for 4,221 yards, 33 touchdowns and seven interceptions with a receiving core that consisted of Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen and KJ Osborn. The Saints have Carr throwing to Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, A.T. Perry, Cedric Wilson and Bub Means. Not to take anything away from the Saints receiving core, but I think that’s a step down.

However, they do have what I believe to be a better running back room. The Vikings had Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison, but the Saints have Alvin Kamara, Kendre Miller and Jamaal Williams. I know they didn’t have the best season last year, but Kubiak will better utilize their strengths (specifically Kamara).

The Saints also have a wild card that the Vikings didn’t have: Taysom Hill. We’ve been hearing that he’s going to be used in a way we haven’t seen before, which I hope means he’ll be on the field much more often, because good things happen when Taysom has the ball.

As for the offensive line, the Saints 2024 unit will be comparable to the Vikings 2021 unit. The Vikings gave up 28 sacks in 2021 compared to the Saints 31 in 2023, but they both weren’t great at blocking for the run game. The Saints line should be slightly improved with Taliese Fuaga coming in, but we will see.

I think with Kubiak, it’s possible to see Derek Carr throw for 4,000 yards and somewhere around 30 touchdowns. He had 3,800 yards and 25 TDs last season, so as long as everyone stays healthy, I don’t see why his numbers wouldn’t improve.

As for the run game, I would expect the Saints to average more than 3.6 yards per carry (31st in the NFL last year). I don’t think we’ll see a 1,000-yard rusher, but it felt like we just watched Kamara rush up the middle every time with Carmichael calling plays, so hopefully we’ll see him spice it up and find ways to get him free on the outside.

It may take a few weeks to gel, but the Saints offense should look more like the offense we saw in the last four or five games of last year than the offense we saw the first 12 or so. If the scheme is good, they definitely have the talent to be one of the better offenses in the league, they just need the line to hold up and good play calling to really get things moving.

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