The New Orleans Saints find themselves sitting with a 2-6 record after eight weeks, and their offense has been pretty much useless without Pro Bowl center Erik McCoy for six of those weeks. This became an even more obvious issue in their Week 8 matchup against the Los Angeles Chargers when they managed to have more total punt yards than total yards of offense during the course of the game. They ended with 366 total yards during the course of the game, which is not horrendous but not good at all either.
As for punting yards, rookie punter Matthew Hayball got 9 attempts to punt and made the most of them as he racked up 437 yards (48.6 per punt). He also put five of his punts inside the opposing 20-yard line and had only two go for a touchback in what was a pretty masterful game for the rookie punter. The Saints were averaging only 162.3 punt yards per game entering Week 8, the 22nd-most in the NFL, which shows how much of an outlier this truly is.
With all due respect to Hayball, the punter should never be the teammate having the best day, and he certainly shouldn’t be outgaining his own offense. Klint Kubiak has some explaining to do. Losing McCoy for so long has given him plenty of time to adjust but no changes have been forthcoming. He hasn’t recovered from that loss even with so many other starters and key contributors returning from injury. The clock is ticking louder as Kubiak’s offense continues to stall out. Something must change, and soon.
