Saints Struggle Despite High-Powered Offense
Crazy things can happen in the NFL, things you wouldn’t expect, things that make very little sense—like how one of the league’s most exciting, highest flying, highest scoring teams could find themselves plodding down the middle of the road halfway through the year. Alas, such is the case for the New Orleans Saints. Following a 49-21 rout of the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday, the Saints upped their record to 5-6. And, despite early season missteps, they did it in fine fashion; the running game was firing on all cylinders, Drew Brees looked crisp as ever, fitting passes into invisible slots, dicing up the Rams’ defense like raw chicken, while the defense shut out LA’s newest team in the second half. For the first time in the 2016-17 NFL Season, the Saints appeared to have some playoff-caliber fight in them.
But now the questions are, can they use this big victory as kindling for a late season comeback? Can they find enough momentum to overcome a less-than-mediocre start? And perhaps most pressing of all, how the heck could a team struggle like they have, with so much firepower in their offensive arsenal, namely the league’s top quarterback—a man who’s thrown for 30 touchdowns on eight interceptions, 3,587 yards in the air, a completion percentage of 71.5, while being sacked as little as 18 times the whole year (not to mention the guy’s pushing 40)? It’s vexing really—especially in a passer’s league. But the answer is neither elusive nor complicated. The reality is, aside from the 0-12 Cleveland Browns, no other team has allowed more points defensively (27.9) than the New Orleans Saints. So basically, the answer to all our aforementioned questions is simple and singular: the defense has to step their sh!t up.
When you look at the team stats in the NFL, on offense you’ll find the Saints at the top of the pile; on defense, you’ll find them lingering somewhere near the bottom. This explains their 5-6 record. It also explains how they lost four of their first six games, allowing 32.5 points and 406 yards a game during that stretch. The two wins they did muster—against the Chargers and the Panthers—they won by margins of one and three points, respectively; the offense had to put up monster performances of 35 points and 41 points just to scrape out victories. Why? Because the defense failed to impose themselves in any visceral way against their opponents.
Now here’s the good news: since that 2-4 start, the defense has improved considerably. In the past five games, they’ve held opposing offenses to 21.4 points and 330.6 yards per game. Coaches have pointed to a number of reasons for the Saints’ early season woes, chief among them injuries. Rookie defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins spent the first eight weeks of the season on injured reserve, recovering from surgery to repair a broken fibula. Cornerback Delvin Breaux also suffered a broken fibula in week 1 and did not return until week 9. And linebacker Dannell Ellerbe missed seven games on the season; since his return he’s recorded 11 tackles (four solo), two sacks, and a broken up pass. The biggest concern when this trio first got hurt was, how is the rest of the defense (a young unit of players) going to step up to new responsibilities and roles in the scheme. It’s taken some time but players are starting to adjust to defense coordinator Dennis Allen’s system. And more than anything, whenever a new system is put in place, it takes time to learn and blend as a cohesive unit. Fortunately their hard work is paying off.
“Our guys are a bunch of tough-minded guys that are extremely competitive and they’ve continued to work even when things weren’t going as well as we would’ve liked,” Allen said. “They continued to believe in the things that we were teaching, and we’re beginning to see some of the fruits of that labor. Obviously, we still got a long way to go, so we still got several weeks left for us to try to continue to improve as a defense.”
The question now is, can the Saints’ offense and defense finally get on the same page, as they did against Los Angeles, and stay there for the rest of the season? Hitting the final stretch, they play the 7-4 Detroit Lions, who’ve won 3 in a row, the 6-5 Buccaneers, also on a 3 game win streak, the 4-6-1 Arizona Cardinals, the Bucs again, and perhaps their most important matchup of the year, the 7-4 Atlanta Falcons, who’ve outscored their opponents by a differential of 56 points. This last game will take place in Atlanta in week 17. Now, three of these last five games are against division opponents. This gives New Orleans an opportunity to improve on their 1-2 division record. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to see everything come together in time for a playoff run.
