The Saints are really gonna give this Jameis Winston thing a try, eh?
Winston's deep balls look good, but his short-range accuracy might be even more important to Sean Payton
The Saints signed Jameis Winston to a one-year contract in 2020. That fall, he had fewer regular season passes (11) than Drew Brees had broken ribs (13).
Brees’ injury failed to clear a path for the former No. 1 overall pick to start in New Orleans last fall. A second single-season deal and a bang-up performance in Monday’s preseason game has made him the favorite to start the season opener in 2021. The Saints face an identity crisis after Brees’ retirement, but Winston could be the player who returns the franchise’s passing offense to the high-flying ways of its peak. All he has to do is throw the ball like a Hall of Famer amid a depleted roster roiled by turnover and salary cap concerns.
If he plays like he did against the Jaguars, he might actually get there.
The Saints starting job in Winston’s to lose (but he’s more than capable of doing so)
New Orleans’ newfound optimism came from a breakthrough performance in the second preseason game of the summer. Winston roasted a mishmash of Jaguars’ first- and second-teamers en route to a 123-yard, two-touchdown showcase in barely 13 minutes of game time. He did so without either of his top offensive stars; running back Alvin Kamara sat out Monday’s exhibition while wideout Michael Thomas is still recovering from offseason ankle surgery.
Winston shined while his competition for the starting role, Taysom Hill, initially struggled. Hill’s first two drives ended in -9 yards. He didn’t notch a touchdown until the third quarter when Jacksonville’s already-underwhelming lineup had been reduced to depth chart filler. The consensus Tuesday morning was Winston will be the QB1 when head coach Sean Payton unveils his first depth chart of the regular season.
The highlight of Winston’s night was a pair of deep ball touchdowns to Marquez Callaway, who shot himself up fantasy football draft boards with a five-catch, 120-yard performance. However, what Winston did near the line of scrimmage may have been just as important for Payton.
New Orleans’ offensive identity late in the Brees’ era was catered to a veteran quarterback’s waning arm strength. The Saints dinked and dunked their way through extended possessions, using quick-hit slants, screens, and fast-release crossing routes to chew up clock and eventually create space for the odd explosive play downfield. New Orleans ranked second, third, and fifth in the league in time of possession the last three years.
Brees’ average pass last season traveled only 6.1 yards past the line of scrimmage. That number the year prior was 6.4. His most-targeted player in that span was Alvin Kamara, who snuck out of the backfield to get roughly 0.2 yards downfield before a pass came his way. Nailing these passes -- the way Brees did en route to a league-best 73.2 percent completion rate the past three years -- is paramount to keeping the Saints’ offense on schedule early in drives and unlocking big plays later in the game.
Winston, tasked with an array of shotgun snaps and play-action handoffs to create a little extra time in the pocket (as well as some three-step drops out of shotgun -- the Saints may be a biiiiiit concerned with giving him time to process), stepped up to make these throws with regularity against a heavy Jags pass rush. Time after time, he progressed through his receiver tree quickly and made the read Brees would have made in the pocket. Except when he didn’t, and it resulted in big gains downfield.
That’s very nice, but let’s pump the brakes on Winston’s ascendance
Winston has never been a low-risk, low-reward passer. His average throw sailed 10.5 yards past the line of scrimmage in his final two seasons as a Buccaneer. His completion rate was a full 12 points lower than Brees’ in that span and his adjusted yards per attempt -- which takes interceptions and touchdowns into account, was 7.1 compared to Brees’ 8.9. These are two very different quarterbacks.
Plus, we’re putting a lot of stock in August football. The mitigating factors in Monday’s performance were:
It happened in the preseason, where nothing counts and
It happened against the Jaguars, who are truly woeful.
Jacksonville is trying to turn its anvil plummet through the layers of NFL respectability into a bounce from rock bottom, but there might not be much separation from the league’s lowest level in 2021. Urban Meyer’s team played so badly in his second (fake) game on the sideline that it turned him into a meme.
Furthermore, there’s the aforementioned 2020 season in which Winston played just 54 snaps. Did he really need a full season to learn the Saints’ playbook after spending the first five years of his career (mostly) starting for the Buccaneers? Payton’s reticence when it came to inserting the high-profile backup following Brees’ injury was a statement unto itself. New Orleans opted for a special teams/gadget play operator over a player with 70 starts to his name last season, relegating the former No. 1 pick to No. 3 status in 2020.
But the wisdom in turning to Hill when Brees left the lineup wasn’t sheer talent, but general fit. The Saints were firmly in Checkdown Brees mode last fall. Teddy Bridgewater’s low-risk passing was the blueprint for what New Orleans needed in relief of its legendary quarterback — in 2019, Bridgewater went 5-0 as a starter. Rather than submit to Winston’s variance, Payton opted for a player he knew could execute the playbook without forcing his offense to temporarily reinvent itself in the middle of a neck-and-neck NFC South race against Tom Brady’s Buccaneers.
Only nine of Hill’s 121 pass attempts in 2020 traveled 20+ yards downfield -- a 7.4 percent deep throw rate that mirrored Brees’ 7.7 percent from the season prior. Winston, on the other hand, threw 102 deep balls in ‘19 on 676 total passes (15.1 percent). That’s a significant shift from the low-impact, low-risk drives the Saints’ had been relegated to when an aging Brees struggled to zip the ball through closing windows in the intermediate and deep ranges.
On Monday, two of his 10 passes went 20+ yards downfield; each ended in the end zone for a perfect 158.3 passer rating. Only one throw traveled 10-19 yards past the line of scrimmage and the final 70 percent were short range attempts. That last number was likely influenced by the low-stakes playcalling that permeates the preseason and will likely drop during the regular season. Still, it’s a valuable window into how Payton may balance an increasingly low-impact offense with a rocket launcher of a quarterback.
The Saints still have a ton of questions left to be answered. Their salary cap management has shifted the focus of their tight end position to a second-year player out of Dayton. The secondary has a gaping hole at corner across from Marshon Lattimore that might as well be a neon sign that says “THROW HERE.” No one knows exactly what’s going on with Michael Thomas.
In the middle of this tempest is a quarterback capable of returning extreme value on the one-year, $5.5 million deal he signed with the team back in March. Harnessing Good Jameis and separating him from Nightmare Jameis was a dream Tampa Bay sunk five years into without effecting any meaningful change in him. Payton and company have spent the last year-plus trying to do the same. If they can pull it off, the Saints might be able to survive the transition from the Brees era to whatever comes next. Monday’s showcase suggests they’ve got a shot.
But it was just one preseason game against the Jaguars. Let’s not print those “SAINTS 2021 NFC SOUTH CHAMPS” shirts just yet.
CDA Don't forget where you heard it first about Winston
Christian I think people are really sleeping on jameis Winston I think he's going to have a career year once he gets his weapons back I mean watch out