Derek Carr to Alvin Kamara. Wheel route. TD #saints ( video by Edwin Goode) pic.twitter.com/bcRNDIkYdT
Buy Saints Tickets— Sean FazendeFOX8 (@SeanFazendeFOX8) August 18, 2023
Look, Joey Bosa is normally rushing after the quarterback, not covering their receivers. But sometimes even he gets caught in a tough spot. That was the case Friday at the New Orleans Saints’ joint practice session with Bosa’s Los Angeles Chargers — with Bosa stuck trying to cover star Saints running back Alvin Kamara on a wheel route.
As you might expect, Kamara torched him to catch a too-easy touchdown pass. The play left Bosa exasperated.
“Man, what are we doing here?” Bosa shrugged to a teammate, futilely punching air on his way back to the huddle. Per Saints News Network’s Ross Jackson, Bosa added, “What the (expletive) do you want me to (expletive) do?”
Yeah, that’s a bit of a mismatch. Bosa outweighs Kamara by about 60 pounds, and to be fair to him he probably shouldn’t have been in this situation. Outside linebackers in a 3-4 defense do sometimes cover the flats, but he should have had some help over the top to pass Kamara off to. From the video at practice it looks like backup safety Raheem Layne was a step slow to slide into his zone and carry Kamara downfield.
But these things happen in games, too. Bosa just found out what many of his peers around the league learned the hard way — when Kamara has a quarterback who can get him the football, he’s just about impossible to defend. It’s early but Derek Carr just might be the kind of passer who can get more out of him than Andy Dalton and Jameis Winston.
