NEW ORLEANS — The 2022 New Orleans Saints are the Thomas Edison of bad football; inventing new and creative ways to lose games each and every week.
Thursday night may have indeed been their most creative work so far. The Saints were winning 14-6, and then just 102 seconds of game time later, they were losing 28-14.
A fairly productive and well played first half by the Saints, especially considering the offense was missing five starters and the defense was down to two healthy cornerbacks, went up in ginger-colored flames as Andy Dalton threw two interceptions which were returned for scores.
The Saints gave us the double doink loss in London and now they delivered the Pick 6 Parade in Arizona. As David Fisher, from the Pelicans Bird Calls Podcast said on Twitter, “If you told me Dalton is gonna throw 4 TDs in a half before the game I would have expected to be happier.”
It's time to stop with the “Saints are committing avoidable mistakes and if they could just stop shooting themselves in the foot they can be a decent team and win games.” Enough. At this point that is wishing for an impossibility.
“Saints, if you could just stop being what you've been for seven weeks and be something COMPLETELY different, that would be great, why can't you do that?”
The Saints have problems from top to bottom. Sure, they have some good players, but every NFL team has at least a handful of good players. The Carolina Panthers, a team so bad their only win in 2022 will likely be the one they got against the Saints, just traded their star running back Christian McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers for a pile of draft picks.
The thing the Saints couldn't have foreseen is that the injury apocalypse, which nearly wrecked the 2021 season entirely, would stick around and finish the job in 2022. The injuries are crippling but it's more than just missing players sinking the Saints.
The Saints defense has become a soft unit which can't stop teams from running the ball, can't tackle, and can't stop teams from getting explosive plays down the field. The Arizona Cardinals were without their starting center, starting guard, and a starting receiver but they managed to rush for 137 yards on 29 carries. The Saints run defense, the very foundation Dennis Allen's elite defense from 2017-2021, is in complete and utter shambles. If the Saints can't stop a bad Cardinal team from jamming the ball right down their throat, what evidence is there they will do anything but continue to get run over for 10 more weeks? Dennis Allen talks about fixing things after all the losses and he will do so again after the next one. He said, “I'm fully confident this team will put together a string of wins and turn things around.” That makes one of us Dennis. I believe in Dennis Allen fixing the Saints like I believe in potholes in New Orleans getting repaired.
Both are talked about endlessly, but we know deep down what's not going to happen. What do the 2022 Saints do well? I ask this because turning around their season would start with what they do well. The only thing I could come up with was the Saints run the ball pretty well, but even that dried up in Arizona, as they rushed for just 85 yards on 22 carries.
They are bad at quarterback, they can't tackle on defense, they don't create turnovers while gifting turnovers to their opponents, and weeks the special teams aren't a calamity feel like a gift from heaven. How can a team barely good at anything turn this around?
The Saints believed they were more than Sean Payton and Drew Brees and had built something that could last after the greatest coach and quarterback in team history were gone. It doesn't feel so much like what Sean Payton and Drew Brees built collapsed so much as it all just disappeared in a snap. The 2022 New Orleans Saints are now one of those comically bad teams with bad players, bad coaching, and bad luck that get thrown on national TV every so often that as Saints fans we used to relentlessly mock and laugh at. “Thank goodness that's not us. Watching that every week must be awful.” Oh how times have changed. The Saints are officially in the NFL basement. The present is dreadful, and seems to last forever, but the future is worse and we fear its arrival even more. The solution for fans? Booze and paper bags.
Ralph Malbrough is a contributing writer and Saints fan living in Houston. Email him at saintshappyhour@gmail.com, find him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter at @SaintsForecast or download the Saints Happy Hour Podcast.
