Cameron Jordan is forcing everyone to take the Saints defense seriously

The Saints offense gets all the attention, but you better keep an eye on Cam Jordan, says retired NFL defensive end Stephen White.

Anybody who has ever watched Cam Jordan play knows he’s a bully on the field. If you see him lined up across from you, you better make sure your chinstrap is buckled up tight because he is not with the frail shit. Whether he’s playing the run or the pass, Jordan is like a grizzly bear out there, mauling guys, play after play after play.

At the same time, while he may often look like he is playing out of control, there is definitely a method to his madness. For as physical as Jordan plays down in and down out, his technique is also some of the best you will see from any edge rusher. When it comes to using his hands to control would be blockers and/or to escape off of blocks, there are few if any better than Jordan in the league right now.

He’s so powerful that he could just run through people all game long, if he wanted to, but it would be a huge mistake to see him as just some kinda goon. In addition to all the manhandling, Jordan manages to mix in some finesse, and he is just as effective running around blockers as he is running over them. He’s surprisingly quick and agile for a man his size, and maybe most importantly, he just understands how to play football.

You won’t see Jordan out there trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to making plays. He is just going to wear you out and wear you down until you make even the slightest mistake. Then he takes that little mistake and exploits it to make you look stupid.

Just ask the Falcons.

On Thanksgiving Day last week Jordan was dominating offensive linemen all afternoon long and making big plays in the backfield. On just about every one of those plays he made, there was a perfect mix of physicality and technique that made him close to impossible to block.

The high-powered Saints offense, led by future Hall of Famer Drew Brees, may get most of the attention this season, but watching Jordan overpower dudes for 60 minutes is my idea of a good time.

Let me highlight a few of the plays he made against the Falcons to give you an idea of what I mean.

With a little less than eight minutes left in the first quarter, and already down 7-0, the Falcons had themselves a first-and-10 from the New Orleans 11-yard line after marching down the field from their own 24. In a game that was sure to be a shootout, the Falcons knew they could ill afford to waste scoring opportunities.

Jordan (red circle) was standing up as the right rush linebacker in a wide nine technique on the line of scrimmage and outside of Falcons tight end Logan Paulsen. Jordan’s teammate, David Onyemata, was lined up inside of Jordan as the three-technique on the outside edge of Atlanta left guard, Wes Schweitzer. Saints safety Vonn Bell was rolled up into the box on that same side, a couple of yards off the ball and close to head up on Paulson.

Where everybody was aligned is important for you to know so that you can fully appreciate how good of a play call this was, on paper at least, because of how the Saints lined up. And hopefully if you can understand how likely it was for the Falcons to have success on that play, you can then also understand what an outstanding play that Jordan made.

Aside from New Orleans defensive tackle Taylor Stallworth lined up head up on Atlanta’s center, Jordan, Onyemata, and Bell were the only Saints defenders in the box to the tight end side of the Falcons formation. Calvin Ridley was lined up outside of the numbers to that side, but his job was just to run a fade and take the cornerback with him and out of Coleman’s way into the end zone. That meant that football math wise you had three blockers (left guard, left tackle and tight end) for three defenders in Jordan, Onyemata, and Bell, which usually isn’t great when you still have to account for the running back.

The key would be putting Jordan in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, and then letting Coleman make him pay for whichever choice he made.

It just so happened that Atlanta called a really good play to take advantage of the Saints’ bad math. One that they probably thought they were going to score on.

The idea was for the left tackle, Jake Matthews, to block down on Onyemata and try to cave him inside, while Paulsen went right up to block Bell who would initially be backpedaling thinking Paulsen was running a route. Schweitzer would pull outside to his left to kick Jordan out.

The effect of all that should have provided a nice little lane between Schweitzer’s kick out block and Matthew’s downblock for their speedy running back, Tevin Coleman, who was offset in the shotgun to the other side, to come across the formation and turn upfield. As long as Paulsen could hold his block on Bell for a couple of seconds, Coleman would have smooth sailing to the end zone.

The beauty of the play design was that it would put Jordan in a no-win situation. If he tried to wrong arm Schweitzer, Coleman could just bounce the run outside and nobody is catching that cat up the sideline. If Jordan went upfield, then Bell would’ve had to have been able to defeat Paulsen’s block and make a tackle on Coleman after Coleman had already worked up a head of steam.

I’m sure on the chalkboard that play looked like a sure thing. There was just one thing wrong with their plan — they picked the wrong dude to run that shit at.

Oh, most of the blocking went exactly as expected. Paulsen had Bell on lock 5 yards down the field, and Matthews’ block kept Onyemata from getting enough penetration to force Coleman on a deeper track. However, when Schweitzer went to kick Jordan out, he straight up got his ass handed to him. Then it was Coleman suddenly the guy in the no-win situation.

It really took watching the end zone copy of this play for me to fully appreciate the can of whup ass Jordan opened up on that play. I imagine the Falcons thought he might fly up the field, looking to get a sack, but after two steps Jordan recognized it was a run and saw Schweitzer coming right at him. He was standing practically flat footed at that point, and Schweitzer had taken at least four steps and looked to be able to splatter Jordan. But when the two finally met, it was Jordan who did not give an inch. In fact, Jordan took Schweitzer on with both hands and tossed him upfield so that Jordan could protect the inside running lane that Coleman was looking for at first.

He jolted Schweitzer so hard that Schweitzer ended up in Coleman’s way, which made the running back have to bow back to try to bounce the run out to the sideline.

Any chance of Coleman scoring on the play were pretty much ruined, but Jordan wasn’t done.

Once he saw Coleman trying to bounce outside, Jordan shuffled laterally. As Schweitzer tried to recover and re-engage with him to help Coleman get to the sideline, Jordan used a swipe move and swatted Schweitzer’s hands away before he could try to grab Jordan with them. Totally free of Schweitzer at that point, Jordan continued outside in his pursuit of Coleman. He wasn’t quite able to get him on the ground, but Jordan’s effort forced Coleman to run out of bounds for a loss of 5 yards.

He started the play off physically dominating Schweitzer and ended it by using great technique to get Schweitzer to whiff on his second attempt to block him. With Jordan’s combination of size, power, athleticism and good technique. I do not envy anybody who ever has to block that man no matter what kind of play its supposed to be.

Later on in the game, the Falcons had a third-and-4 just across midfield coming out of the two minute warning for the first half. Down 17-3 at that point, they were looking to put some points on the board before halftime to try to cut into the Saints lead. This time Jordan was lined up as the left defensive end in a wide-five outside of Falcons right tackle Ryan Schraeder.

As soon as the ball was snapped and he saw Schraeder pass setting, Jordan came off low and hard for power rush. He exploded right into Schraeder’s chest and had him on his heels. At exactly the same time Sheldon Rankins, lined up inside of him as the three-technique, hit Falcons right guard, Ben Garland, with a nasty spin move right at the line of scrimmage. But for Garland sticking his right leg out and tripping him (the refs didn’t call it, of course), Rankins probably would have run through Matt Ryan’s chest for a sack of his own.

Unfortunately for him, Garland’s dirty trick actually worked and Rankins ended up on the ground, unable to take down Ryan from his knees. Rankins did end up flushing Ryan from the pocket. And that was fortunate for Jordan.

Right about the same time that Rankins was getting tripped, it appeared as if Schraeder had shut Jordan’s power rush down. Schraeder shot his hands wide on the outside of Jordan’s shoulder pads to try to engulf him and hold on for dear life and keep Jordan off his quarterback.

Jordan had other ideas.

Out of nowhere Jordan bench-pressed Schraeder up off of him. I’m talking a shove that created about a yard’s worth of separation between the two when it looked like Schraeder had stoned him. And as soon as Schraeder went flying backwards, Jordan used his inside hand to violently swat Schraeder’s inside arm away so that Schraeder would have no shot of trying to recover and grab him.

Rankins forced Ryan to step up in the pocket, but Ryan couldn’t get away from Jordan who threw Shraeder off of him right at the level of the quarterback. It went in the books as a sack for a loss of 2 yards.

Once again Jordan’s relentless style along with his tremendous physical strength allowed him to make the play. It was also his good hand technique showing up again, finishing the move with that hand swat, that insured that Schraeder would not be able to grab Jordan and keep him from getting the sack.

The last play I want to highlight was towards the end of regulation. Atlanta was in desperation mode down 31-10 with just a little over seven minutes left in the game. The Falcons were facing a third-and-5 from the Saints’ 44-yard line. Not only did they need to convert, they also needed to try score as fast as possible to try to catch up because they were running out of time.

Jordan was once again lined up as the left defensive end across from Schraeder in a wide-five. He came off the ball low and hard again. Jordan looked like he was going to hit Schraeder with yet another power rush. He did initially bull rush Schraeder for a couple of steps, but once he had Schraeder’s shoulders turned all the way around, Jordan transitioned into a rip move. But the rip was only a setup.

Schraeder tried to counter Jordan’s rip move by trying to head him off at the pass and keep him from turning the corner, but Jordan was never actually trying to get around the edge in the first place. He just needed Schraeder to over-commit so that when Jordan started his spin move, Schraeder would not be able to slow down his momentum.

It was a textbook level-of-the-quarterback spin, complete with Jordan swinging his outside around to ice pick Schraeder in the back and help nudge him on by. That left Jordan completely free, and since he executed the move at the level of the quarterback, Jordan found himself standing right beside Ryan. The funny thing is Ryan had no idea Jordan was standing right there next to him so he ended up running right into Jordan’s arms trying to move around in the pocket. This time Jordan took him down for a loss of 7 yards, and maybe more importantly, that kept the clock running down on the Falcons’ ever diminishing chances of a comeback.

New Orleans might be the team every other team least wants to see come playoff time. Yeah, the offense gets most of the attention, but it is important to remember that they have some ballers on defense as well. Cam Jordan is definitely one of them, as he so vividly reminded us while we were eating our turkey and dressing last Thursday.

He has been kicking ass since he first got into the league, and now in this his eighth season, he may well be playing the best football of his career. It isn’t always pretty when he unleashes hell on opposing offenses, but it damned sure is effective.

With two sacks, three pressures, a tackle for a loss, a tackle for no gain on third down and another tackle, Jordan beat the Falcons down on Sunday and earned my Hoss Of The Week honors for Week 12 of the NFL season.