NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Saints ended their most frustrating season in 15 years in the most stupid and frustrating way possible. The Saints’ 10-7 season finale loss to the Carolina Panthers couldn’t have been a more fitting end to the 2022 season if it was written and directed like a television show.
The Saints gave us all their nonsense hits from the 2022 season.
Inept offense, bad special teams, critical turnovers, and poor coaching decisions were all rolled out for us to suffer one last time. The Saints lost a football game in which Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold completed five passes to Panthers players and two to Saints defensive backs.
Darnold finished 5 of 15 for 43 yards, with 2 interceptions and a quarterback rating that would be a mediocre GPA for a college student (2.8). I’m not even mad, I’m weirdly impressed. It truly was PEAK 2022 Saints.
The Saints offense looked great on the opening drive and maybe they thought the season was over after that? I don’t know. They had 69 yards of offense in the second half; honestly, that number feels high, and it seems like it was much less.
The Saints offense had four games in 2022 where they scored no points in the second half and their second-half point totals the last six weeks were 0, 3, 7, 14, 0, 0.
That’s four points a game for those of us who find math annoying. If you only score four points in the second half of games, it doesn’t matter if your defense only allows 13 points a week for the entire game in the same span, you won’t win very much.
There’s something so demoralizing and sad about terrible offense isn’t there? We’ll put up with a LOT if our team scores points. Sean Payton’s defenses in 2007-08, 2012, and 2014-16 were some of the worst defenses in history, and we begged with him, pleaded even to just be less terrible.
We watch bad offense though? We want coaches fired out a cannon and into the sun.
Dennis Allen did an incredible job fashioning a defense that by the end of the season was the same elite defense he’s had the previous five years. He did it mostly without his two best players from 2021. Marshon Lattimore got hurt and missed 10 weeks and Marcus Davenport went from having nine sacks in 2021 to getting ejected vs. the Panthers yesterday being his most noteworthy 2022 on-field achievement.
Allen’s defense won’t matter one dang bit if he doesn’t fix the offense. If Offense doesn’t improve in 2023 and Saints will be coach-hunting next January.
The easy answer is always to blame the offensive coordinator but the Saints problems on offense run so much deeper than Pete Carmichael Jr.
He wasn’t great yesterday and his decision to run Alvin Kamara up the middle on 4th and short while playing two backup guards felt as sensible as my all king cake diet to lose weight.
The thing is running Taysom Hill didn’t really work yesterday. Hill had five carries for 24 yards, but if you remove his 10-yard run, he had four carries for 14 yards. Bad. Alvin Kamara ran the ball pretty well (107 yards) but asking him to run between the tackles is barely a viable strategy for one game much less a season.
The passing game wasn’t much better. As Andy Dalton didn’t see a wide-open Taysom Hill that could have made the score 14-0 and looked exactly like a backup quarterback the entire day.
Dennis Allen after the game wasn’t ready to fire anyone or talk about drastic changes.
“Nobody’s making any decisions on anything 30 minutes after we walked off the field.”
The decisions will likely come fast though. Maybe as early as this week.
In a way Sunday’s offensive performance was a good thing for the Saints heading into 2023. The reason is if the Saints had won comfortably and the offense looked good maybe Dennis Allen would have been tempted to say, “Oh Andy Dalton is fine, Alvin Kamara is fine, we got two good young receivers. All good. We just need some better health and better luck and we will be good to go next September.”
When you get beat by a team that threw for 43 yards and you only ran four plays in the second half on Carolina’s side of the field, which you only got because your defense created a turnover, there’s no fooling yourself into believing your offense is close to capable.
We can say whatever we want about Dennis Allen, the man knows this head coaching job with the Saints will be his last one if he doesn’t succeed. The Saints offseason will be filled with Sean Payton rumors and quarterback arguments, but the task for Dennis Allen is as straightforward as it gets…fix your offense in 2023 or the Saints will find someone else who will in 2024.
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.