While the New Orleans Saints finished the 2025 season as the No. 19 run defense in the NFL, allowing 120.6 per game, the team’s defensive performance against the run stood out much better on a more granular scale.
New Orleans faced the third-most rushing attempts per game with an average of 30.4.
With more rushes, even at a low efficiency, will inherently come more rushing yards. Things could have been a lot worse for New Orleans. The NFL’s average rushing yards allowed per carry last year was 4.4.
At 30.4 carries per game, New Orleans could have been closer to allowing 133.76 rushing yards per contest, a tally that would have landed them within the bottom five teams last year. Instead, New Orleans surrendered just 4.0 yards per carry.
Along with that, the team proved to be situationally efficient. EPA (Expected Points Added) is an efficiency metric that measures how likely a team is to score based on the success or failure of a play. It accounts for factors like down, distance and game situation.
Defensively, a team wants to earn a negative rating, meaning that they are forcing the opposing offense to lose more per play than win.
The Saints finished the 2025 season with an EPA per rush rating of minus-0.136, No. 2 in the NFL.
Carrying over this kind of per-play success will be vital for defensive coordinator Brandon Staley and his group. Defensive additions such as linebacker Kaden Elliss, EDGE Anfernee Jennings and defensive tackle Christen Miller should each help to raise the bar and help New Orleans build off of its efficient 2025.
As for cutting down on overall yardage, faster starts in the offensive side may prove to be the best defense. If head coach Kellen Moore and quarterback Tyler Shough can lead the team to earlier scoring and better first-half proficiency, opponents wouldn’t have as much of a chance to lean on their rushing attacks and instead will have to go to the air to stay in the game.
With a surging pass rush and promising secondary, that would be the Saints defense’s preferred path to victory.
