After the first two weeks of the 2024 NFL season, the New Orleans Saints are leading the league with an astounding 45.5 points per game, and former Minnesota Vikings assistant coach Klint Kubiak is a big reason why.
Kubiak is in his first year as the Saints offensive coordinator, and few could have predicted what the team has been able to do in its first two games of the 2024 campaign.
New Orleans began the season with a 47-10 demolishing of the Carolina Panthers, but most just assumed that large victory was due to the Saints taking advantage of an extremely weak opponent. Then Week 2 happened, and New Orleans's new high-powered offense led them to a 44-19 win on the road over the Dallas Cowboys.
New Orleans Saints offense off to record start under former Minnesota Vikings coach Klint Kubiak
This is Kubiak's second stint as an NFL offensive coordinator, as he ran the Vikings offense back during the 2021 season under former Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer.
That year, the Vikings finished 15th in the league in points scored per offensive drive, 11th in passing yards per game, and 17th in rushing yards per matchup. It was a pretty average offense at best, and when Zimmer was fired after the 2021 season, Kubiak went elsewhere too.
He wound up landing a job with the Denver Broncos in 2022 as the team's quarterbacks coach and passing game coordinator. Then, in 2023, he joined the San Francisco 49ers coaching staff as their passing game coordinator.
After helping the 49ers average the fourth-most passing yards per game in the NFL last season, the Saints hired Kubiak last February to be the team's new offensive coordinator. He was brought in to help New Orleans install a new offensive scheme for the first time in almost two decades.
In 2022 and 2023, the Saints had been using the same offensive system that was run by former head coach Sean Payton since 2006. However, it wasn't producing the results that New Orleans head coach Dennis Allen wanted, so after parting with longtime offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, Kubiak was hired to help the Saints install a more modern NFL offense.
So far, Allen has to be ecstatic with what New Orleans's new offensive coordinator has been able to do this season. Now, the big question for Kubiak and the Saints offense is whether or not they can continue to score points at a record rate.
Next on the schedule for New Orleans is a Week 3 matchup inside their home building against a 1-1 Philadelphia Eagles team. Perhaps the Saints offense could slow down a bit in this contest; however, they'll be facing an Eagles defense that ranks 29th in the league this year in points allowed per offensive drive.
At the very least, Kubiak, who began his NFL coaching career in 2013 with Minnesota as an offensive quality control coach, seems to have found a way to quickly transform the New Orleans offense into one that can potentially keep up with almost any other team in the league.