The New Orleans Saints have been in a lot of close games this season, and Week 13 certainly qualified in the end, but it sure didn't start out that way.
The Saints fought back, but an early 21-0 deficit was the story of another loss at the Caesars Superdome, which head coach Dennis Allen broke down with Bobby Hebert and Mike Hoss this week.
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“We came out and we got punched in the face right there to start the game and it was tough for us to come back from," Allen said. "But I thought our guys fought and battled and certainly we understand there’s no participation trophies in our league, but our guys battled back against a good team. We gave ourselves a chance to win. We didn’t get it done.”
The loss continued a concerning trend of poor first-half defense. Five of the Saints' seven losses have been in one-score games, but they've trailed by double-digits in the first half of four of them, with the exception being a Week 3 loss to the Packers in which the Saints led 17-0 in the fourth quarter. The ability to rally is a positive trait, but it shouldn't have to be the case in every game.
“I think the big thing is we’ve got to come out and we’ve got to execute what we’re doing offensively and defensively," Allen said. "We had an opportunity to get off the field on third down on the first drive of the game this past week, and when you have those opportunities, you’ve got to take advantage of them. You can’t give good teams second chances, and so, you know, that was probably the big thing, is we’ve got to be able to execute, and when we get them to third down, we’ve got to be able to get off the field early on in the game.”
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The Saints (5-7) have now lost three straight games and will look to get back on track this week when the Panthers (1-11) visit the Caesars Superdome.
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MORE FROM DENNIS ALLEN
On struggles covering TEs
“I think this is a matchup league and, you know, we’ve got to do a better job of trying to match up with the tight ends and so obviously you play a team like Detroit, who has a lot of different weapons, you’ve got to make some choices as to where you’re going to put your resources and, you know, there’s a few plays in there that I wish we would’ve devoted a little bit more to the tight end, LaPorta, but look, we have to learn from those mistakes and we have to try to be better as we move forward.”
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On red zone turnaround
“I think the big thing in the red area is, we talked about it this last week and we spent some more time working on the red area, was that we had to find ways to convert when we had the ball in that 20 yard line to the 5 yard line area, and then we felt like, man, when we get the ball inside the 5, we’re pretty effective. Taysom, obviously, has been a big part of, when we have success in the red area, he’s always been a big part of that with our football and he was a big part of that this week, but we were able to convert a little bit more. We were able to get ourselves down inside the 5, where we’ve been highly successful in the red area.”
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On strong performances from Baun and Sewell
“We used Zack Baun a little bit more in terms of the rush plan, you know, with Cam being kind of hobbled a little bit with the ankle. We used him a little more as a rusher. He took advantage of that. He had a really good rush against Penei Sewell, one of the better tackles in our league to get a sack. And I thought Nephi Sewell played really, really well in the game. His first opportunity to get any real significant playing time and I was really impressed with what he was able to do. Hopefully there will continue to be some more opportunities for guys that stepped up and made some plays.”