If the eyeball test Thursday concluded that the New Orleans Saints had a good joint practice against Jacksonville at the Ochsner Sports Performance Center, Saints players said it's fine to trust your eyes.
Improvement was evident for New Orleans, which was admittedly juiced to face an opponent other than itself.
Saints starters operated an efficient two-minute offense and provided fireworks with chunk plays, including completions from quarterback Tyler Shough to receivers Chris Olave and Bryce Lance. And the starting defense generated an effective pass rush and was stout on its final work of the day, a two-minute drill that kept the Jaguars from scoring.
"I thought it was a great day," quarterback Tyler Shough said. "Every single period, I felt like we kind of had the edge a little bit. The run game was working really well, I feel like we had some good chunks in the pass game. There was some bad — they're a really good team, too. (But) I think that was our goal: Let's just go out there and focus on us and I feel like we did that. I felt like we got a lot better and it was fun going against someone else."
"Different team, different energy, hot — how are we going to respond?" edge rusher Chase Young said. "I feel like we responded the right way. We could have been better, obviously. We made mistakes. But at the same time, regardless of all of that, we came out, we were running around, flying around and we played physical."
The Saints and Jaguars crammed roughly 90 plays into a little more than two hours, working on both practice fields. It was New Orleans' first reps against an opponent in a stretch of three joint practices (including against Dallas and the Rams next Tuesday and Thursday) and two preseason games (Saturday against the Jaguars in the Caesars Superdome, and next Saturday against the Rams at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Cal.) in a 10-day window.
Coach Kellen Moore and the team welcomed Thursday's encounter.
"Just different looks and different play styles," Moore said. "Every defense is going to play it a little bit different, so I think that's good exposure. When your offense and defense goes together for (11 practices), you kind of get accustomed to the way you fit combination blocks, the way the front is structured and all these different things.
"And now you get it presented in a different way and I think that's really good work for our guys. And that's a really good football team; that team was in the playoffs for a reason last year. I think the teams we're competing against the next two weeks is going to do a really great job of preparing us."
New Orleans' defense, which had been disruptive throughout camp, stayed the course and finished with a strong two-minute drill.
"It was real good," said Young, who jokingly estimated he totaled six sacks Thursday. "Everybody was tired. We communicated, we still were getting off the ball. I love what we put on tape today because it just showed how tough we were.
"We need to make mistakes. We need to be in situations where we're not sure, so we can make our mistakes now. We can respond negatively now so in a game, we get in that same exact moment, we'll be able to respond better.
"I think we played good ball, man. We definitely made a few mistakes but overall, I'm sure the coaches will be happy. I know I'm pretty happy."
Likewise, Shough was pleased with how the offense operated.
"You don't necessarily want to use the other team as a metric but at the same time, it's also a competition-based sport," he said. "I think it was a good day to focus on us as an offense and I feel like we really improved.
"And I think more than anything, it was good to go against a really good defense in the Jaguars and continually we're going to be able to do that in the next couple of games against the Rams and Cowboys. We feel really good where we're at but we also know that we have so much more to go. We're nowhere close to where we need to be, but we also know we're kind of light years from where we were last year as well."
