Saints Offensive Tendencies: Likes Shotgun, LOVES No Huddle

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The Saints offense has had some hills to climb in the first two weeks. Against Detroit, quarterback Tyler Shough pushed his team to overtime, after falling behind 21-zip, eventually falling by one-point to the Lions. Then, in Week 2, Shough led his team back from an 11-point deficit, scoring 15-unanswered points to upset the Ravens. Both games came on the road.

The New Orleans home-opener is a late start this Sunday, 3:25 p.m. CT as the Las Vegas Raiders come to the Caesar Superdome.

Learn more about the Raiders offense here.

Over the first two weeks, Kellen Moore's offense has shown certain leanings, some among the leaders in the NFL.

Let us remind you that two games is not enough to determine a solid tendency. It gives us a very small sampling, but it does give us insight as to what the Saints have done through the first two weeks of the 2026 season. We get this data from Sharp Football Analysis.

Shotgun or Not Shotgun

The trend this NFL season has been to have quarterbacks put themselves back under center. The Saints' two opponents are among top nine teams in the NFL over the first two weeks of the season who tend to place their QBs closer to the line: Detroit puts Jared Goff under center 54.1% of the time, while the Lamar Jackson is up close 48.3% of the time.

Background on the Raiders defense can be found here.

Not so for the Saints.

Shough is in the shotgun 66% of the plays run by the Saints, whether it's a run or a pass. That's sixth most frequent in the league. If you're wondering, the team that uses the shotgun the most is Houston, running it 74.2% of the time.

No Huddle a Lot

The Saints find themselves tied with Philadelphia with the highest occurrence of using the no-huddle offense. Both teams are using it 16% of the time, the most in the NFL. Of course, the lion's share of those numbers for the Saints can be attributed to having to come from behind in both of their games.

In case you're wondering, the team that has gone no-huddle the least is New England. According to Sharp, they haven't used the no-huddle once in their two games.

Putting People in Motion

The NFL is a motion league. Teams love to disguise what they're doing by putting a player in motion, then moving around another one. Even the Giants, who motion the least in the league, used it 42.3% of the time.

Though the Saints do it a lot, they're not the #1 team. That honor belongs to Tampa Bay who motions on 76.3% of their plays. The Saints are the ninth most at getting their guys from one side of the field to the other before the ball is snapped, doing it 61.3% of the time.

Saints Show Up Tempo

This is another statistic that can be directly attributed to New Orleans having to come behind, like the no huddle stat. We found it interesting, though that only one team has used less play clock before the ball is snapped: Tennessee has averaged 30-seconds left. New Orleans is barely 2nd using 30.2 seconds of the play clock before snapping the ball.

The teams using the most of the clock before getting the ball to the quarterback, are Minnesota taking 34.9-seconds, and Seattle snapping it 34.4-seconds after the play clock starts.

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