Raiders HC Jon Gruden disagrees Patriots took Darren Waller out of game ‘We had Waller open’
Over the first two games of this season, Darren Waller had the second most catches in the league (18) and led all tight ends in targets (24). And yet through two quarters against the Patriots, Waller had zero catches on zero targets.
It was obvious the Patriots game plan was to take the Derek Carr’s top target away from him and make the rest of the team beat them. Waller would finish with two catches on four targets for nine yards.
If Carr was not throwing to Waller because he was being double covered all day, and thus was never open, it was a smart move to go elsewhere. But Gruden saw times when Waller was open, which would suggest Derek Carr just didn’t see him.
“We have a lot of good receivers. We didn’t come in here today to target Waller every play,” said Gruden when asked what the Patriots did to take Waller out of the game. “Credit New England, they had a nice game plan. They got pressure on our quarterback a few times. We had Waller open. The film is out there for everybody to look at. But New England did a nice job. They did a better job than we did today.”
Gruden seems to credit New England only for dialing up the pressure on Carr, further suggesting that what he saw was his signal-caller get taken out of his game by the pass rush and therefore miss his elite tight end.
Derek Carr copped to one time in the game that he missed an open Waller. it was on a play in which they made it look as if they were going to double team him, which worked in part because they had been putting double teams on Waller the rest of the game.
“I mean there was one play I missed him on, but they did a good job of making it look like a double when they weren’t doubling him, you know what I’m saying?” Carr said of whether the Patriots took Waller away. “They do a good job, man. And you don’t have three seconds to say is he really doubling? I mean, you gotta play the game fast. You gotta make your decisions. And I owned up that. I said ‘Hey, man, I missed you, that was my fault.’ But besides that there was times when he was in certain spots they’d drop underneath him. When he was in other spots they would double him. They would check to this or check to that. I mean that’s what they try and do. And you saw Hunter [Renfrow] have a big day. With this team you got to figure out they’re playing in situational football, third downs, and who they’re going to try and double and who they’re going to try and take away and obviously you know where most of our targets usually go.”
The Patriots sure knew. The Saints seem to have either been caught off guard by Waller who had 90 catches last season or were just unable to defend him properly.
Whether Waller was truly missed just the one time as Carr said or if he was open a lot more often as Gruden suggested won’t be known until the All-22 coaches film is released.
What we did see was when Carr finally did throw Waller’s direction, the first two passes were batted down, both by Devin McCourty. That would seem to help Carr’s version of things. But Waller not seeing a single pass in the first half is hard to square with no matter what the defense is doing.
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