NEW ORLEANS — The 2021 New Orleans Saints season has fallen into such disaster, despair, and sadness we watched a Saints quarterback throw 4 interceptions, and it felt like a GIGANTIC improvement on offense from the previous 2 weeks — and it was.
The Saints have gone from 5-2 and fighting to be the best team in the NFC to, “Sure Taysom Hill was terrible against the Dallas Cowboys but at least he's interesting to watch.”
Everybody slows down to peak at the car crash or something. The Saints let a winnable game slip away because they were missing 7 starters on offense and being a competent NFL offensive team feels like some sort of ridiculous Christmas wish.
Taysom isn't a superhero and the All-Taysom offense as Sean Payton lamented after the game could have used some help, “I'll be honest, we didn't help him any in the first half. We got to catch that first interception in the first half. Perfect coverage look we get, we drop a ball, they make a good play on it. That's unfortunate.”
It was nice to see Sean Payton as fed up with the Saints' terrible receivers as we are. The Saints receiver who dropped that pass which led to a Cowboys interception was Kenny Stills. The only thing I'll say about Kenny Stills return to the Saints is the Saints wouldn't be any worse at receiver if he hadn't come back at all, and the Saints have the worst receivers in football.
Taysom played with a busted-up finger, and let's hope it won't sideline him because being forced to watch Trevor Siemian at quarterback feels like the cruelest holiday punishment. If Siemian had played against the Cowboys he might've been sacked 10 times. Hill's mobility and quick decisions avoided too many sacks to count. Hill ran for 101 yards, threw for 264 more and the Saints for the first time in 3 weeks actually had a pulse in the first half of a football game.
Payton understood the challenge the Saints faced without both of their starting offensive tackles. “We were trying every type of play we could to reduce the stress on those 2 players. How do we not turn it into a night where there are 8 or 9 sacks.”
The trouble is duct tape, gum, and Sean Payton scheming to protect 2 backup tackles can only hold so long, and by the fourth quarter, the Cowboys' defensive line began to overwhelm the Saints' offense. Hill was either running for his life or trying to throw the ball before disaster arrived in the form of large Dallas Cowboys intent of inflicting pain.
The dam finally broke on a critical 3rd and 2 deep in Cowboys territory with Saints trailing 20-10. Hill got sacked by Dallas rookie Micah Parsons and the Saints were pushed out of field goal range. From then on, the Saints offense was basically a rag doll the Cowboys dragged around the Caesar's Superdome at will.
While the Saints' offense upgraded from disaster to awful, the defense returned to their standard 2021 form; really good play ruined by allowing a handful of explosive long plays.
The 2021 Saints defense is like my 6-year old son Max drawing a really wonderful picture, and the big plays they allow are the soda he always spills on the picture to kind of ruin the drawing. I have no idea exactly what Marcus Williams was doing on Tony Pollard's 58-yard touchdown run, I just know it was wrong.
While we rightly focus on all the injuries the Saints have on offense, the absence of Marcus Davenport on defense means the Saints defense has no real pass rush to speak of unless defensive coordinator Dennis Allen dials up blitzes. No pass rush against aggressive man-to-man coverage the Saints play means big plays eventually happen. Add pass rushers to the Saints 2022 shopping list because Davenport is always hurt, Payton Turner is injured as well, and Cam Jordan has not been the kind of factor we had expected.
So what's the rest of the Saints 2021 season look like? Sinking sadness.
The Saints will be hard-pressed to win any games the last 5 weeks, and just as bad as that is the fact they don't really have any young promising players to throw on the field to see if there are solutions for the future. The craziest and most frustrating thing about the 2021 Saints is despite collapsing into a pile of injured helplessness, they will still only be 1 game out of a playoff spot heading into Week 14. The Saints are 1 game away from the playoffs like I'm one election win from being President of the United States.
The Saints' bad luck in 2021 will end it seems only when they run out of games to play.
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.