The New Orleans Saints had a chance for a statement win at MetLife to prove they were head and shoulders above the lowly Giants.
This game wasn’t that, not by any stretch of the imagination. The Saints blocked a potential game-tying kick after doing their best to blow an 11-point 4th quarter lead (sound familiar?). The Cajun Cannon Bobby Hebert didn’t pull any punches in his postgame rant.
“It was two garbage teams … so nothing to write home about,” Hebert said. "It was two bad teams and it was an ugly game, but you don’t apologize for winning.”
Hear Bobby Hebert’s full postgame rant in the player above. Can’t see the embed? Click here.
The positive is that the Saints came away with a win, but it all began to spiral in very familiar ways. It wasn’t dissimilar to a loss to this same Giants team in 2021. They led by 11 with 7 minutes to go in that game before falling in overtime. This year it was an 11-point lead with less than 5 minutes to go that very quickly evaporated. This week's game also felt eerily similar to the loss to the Panthers in Week 9 up until the point that Graham Gano’s kick fluttered into the back of the end zone off of Bryan Bresee’s hand.
The Saints, the Cannon explains, are not closers. It’s been an issue all season, and it’s one of the chief reasons they find themselves with a 5-8 record and just a thread of a chance in the playoff race.
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"It was just very discouraging how it seemed like we had the momentum but we couldn’t put them away. I don’t know, do you feel like that we can finish games?” Hebert said. "What I mean by finish games, I’m not even looking at the 4th quarter, I’m talking about look at the last 4 or 5 minutes. We can’t close out games. We still cannot finish games. Now, I would take this ugly win and I would feel good about myself if we were playing the Packers in Green Bay on Monday night and we won ugly I’d say hell yea, the Packers are good. The Giants aren’t good, the Giants are sorry, they’re not very good, so nothing to write home about.”
The Saints still have a chance to finish out their season on a high note, but the competition level will spike significantly the next two weeks when they host the 8-5 Washington Commanders and then ship up to Green Bay for a frozen showdown with the 9-4 Packers.