The New Orleans Saints just lost their third straight game of the season, falling to 2-3 after a blistering hot 2-0 start. This recent loss was at the hands of the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football. The score was only 26-13, but it should have been a whole lot worse.
Injuries Killing The Saints Still
The first thing to mention was that the Saints were and still are ravaged by injuries. They played this game without key players across both sides such as Taysom Hill, Erik McCoy, Cesar Ruiz, Pete Werner, and Willie Gay. To make matters worse, the team watched Lucas Patrick exit for a while with an injury before returning, and safety Will Harris exited without returning. Oh, and we can’t forget that Derek Carr left the game in the fourth quarter with his future status in doubt already thanks to what is being called an oblique injury. All in all, the team is just devastated by injuries, though that’s no excuse for how they’ve played.
The past two weeks, the Saints played well enough to win but lost at the last second thanks to defensive collapses. This week, they simply just had a bad performance. It was bound to happen at some point. The hope was that they’d have won the games they do well in so that they would be sitting at 4-1 rather than 2-3. Unfortunately, that’s not reality. This was another wake-up call for the Saints, as head coach Dennis Allen has repeatedly shown that he can’t win big games for this franchise. The Chiefs were able to do anything that they wanted against his defense and the offense looked miserable at times aside from a few chunk plays.
Red Zone Defense Was Great
The one true positive that I’m taking out of this game is that the Saints’ red zone defense seems to be legit. They had given up four offensive touchdowns all season and only surrendered two this week. That’s six touchdowns allowed in five games. And yet this roster is 2-3. Now, the Saints did allow the Chiefs to reach the red zone around seven times, they just held them to field goals the overall majority of the time. This defense has a bend but doesn’t break mentality, and while that has proven to be helpful, it’s also unreliable. You can’t keep hoping that they’re going to make red zone stops every possession, because if the Chiefs even scored one more touchdown on these trips, then this game is classified as a blowout. Still, I liked what I saw from that part of the field.
Offense Didn’t Impress Again
As for the rest of the game, I was disappointed. The offense had no answers again. Derek Carr had 165 yards, two touchdowns, and a horrible interception on the opening drive of the game that set the tone early on. Carr also made a couple of throws that just felt rushed due to the pressure. However, there were other throws that he made that were right on the money despite pressure, and they were dropped by his receivers. Speaking of this team didn’t even bother looking at Chris Olave, who had just two receptions for 10 yards. Even Olave’s brother spoke up about his involvement on social media, questioning the number of targets he had in the game. Besides Olave, Rashid Shaheed had four receptions for 86 yards and a touchdown, but that was it. Alvin Kamara had six for 40 yards, Juwan Johnson had five receptions for 31, Foster Moreau had two for 13 yards, and Mason Tipton had one catch for two yards. This offense is brutally thin; they need Davante Adams desperately.
Both Lines Just Haven’t Shown Up
One final thought on the team overall before moving on, I think that the lack of a healthy offensive line is truly hurting this group. Alvin Kamara had no space to run every single time he touched the football. It’s been a concerning trend in each of the last three games without McCoy and Ruiz healthy on that line. Kamara had 11 rushes for 26 yards against the Chiefs. That’s just not going to get it done in a meaningful game. Especially when the Saints’ defensive line on the other end is nowhere to be found. New Orleans gave up over 135 rushing yards to the Chiefs while also repeatedly failing to provide any pressure to Mahomes in the pocket. And in the times that they did pressure him, they failed to contain or bring him down, resulting in chunk plays down the field. Both the offensive and defensive lines have been horrendous, and it’s showing now.
Chiefs Outplayed And Outcoached New Orleans
For this quick section on the Chiefs, there’s not much to be said. We’ve all known that this is a championship-caliber team even with some of their injuries. Why? Because they still have Mahomes, Andy Reid, and Travis Kelce. That showed once again. They continue to make plays whenever they need it, have guys across the offense step up time and time again, and boast a defense that can bail them out whenever they happen to fail offensively. I don’t see how this team won’t win a Super Bowl again this season, I just don’t.
Finally, I must talk about Dennis Allen. The team’s head coach said after the game that the Saints were “outplayed” and “outcoached”. This is a worrisome trend for Allen, who has said this on numerous occasions throughout his tenure in New Orleans. We just saw the New York Jets fire head coach Robert Saleh; it’d be really surprising if Allen keeps his job the rest of the season with how this team is playing and how talented they appear to be.