This is a welcome development: NewOrleans.Football’s Brooke Kirchhofer shared a fascinating nugget from Sunday’s preseason game with the Kansas City Chiefs, pointing out that the New Orleans Saints offense used motion on 25.4% of their plays midway through the third quarter.
For context, that’s almost twice as often as they used motion last season. ESPN Stats and Info found the Saints used motion on just 12.8% of their offensive snaps in 2022, which ranked 23rd around the league; the 25.4% figure from Kirchhofer would have ranked 7th-most.
That’s quite a reversal, but it’s a big part of the Saints offense with Derek Carr under center. Getting his receivers in motion before the snap helps disguise the offense’s intentions and gives guys a running start, and it paid off with the first-half offense racking up 220-plus yards of offense against Kansas City.
Some of the best offenses around the league lean hard on motion; units like the Miami Dolphins, Detroit Lions, and San Francisco 49ers ranked high both in points scored and motion. We’ll see if that trend continues further into the preseason and the regular season when game results begin to matter most.
