The New Orleans Saints went into last week's schedule release already knowing the teams they'd be playing, it was just a matter of where and when.
Even so, the complete lack of any primetime games for the first time in a quarter century caught team officials a bit offguard, as Saints GM Mickey Loomis addressed this week.
"That’s what the league thinks of us, and that’s fine," Loomis said, speaking ahead of the annual Saints Hall of Fame Celebrity Golf Classic.
All in all, though, the schedule sets up positively. The Saints won't have any short weeks. They'll have road games in Buffalo and Chicago prior to the serious threat of cold weather. They open up with two games at home and have an ideally placed by in Week 11. Oh, and the team has some built-in bulletin board material, to boot.
The last time the Saints went without a primetime game was the 2000 season. The Saints went 10-6 that year, the first under new head coach Jim Haslett, and earned the first postseason win in franchise history.
“Yea, I think we can [use the primetime snub as motivation]. Yes, absolutely," Loomis said. "Look, we’re used to playing in primetime, right, over the years, but you know, we had five wins last year, so we can’t really complain about it. You’ve got to go out and perform and earn those opportunities.”
To do that the Saints will have to buck expectations and put on a better show than it's done the past two seasons, including a Monday Night Football shutout late in the year against the Packers. The starting quarterback for that game was Spencer Rattler, and he could very much be in line to start again based on the results of a QB competition between himself, third-year pro Jake Haener and rookie second-round pick Tyler Shough.
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That's the case after Derek Carr's sudden retirement, something Loomis opted not to rehash this week, maintaining that while an unusual scenario, injuries can often spin plans offtrack in the NFL.
"You get curveballs in this game all the time," he said, "and this is one that we have to deal with.”
That leaves the Saints with one of the most inexperienced QB rooms in NFL history, and definitely in franchise history, with 7 games of starting experience between the four players currently on the roster. Two of those players are rookies who haven't played a down in the NFL, including Shough and UDFA Hunter Dekkers, who was signed after a rookie camp tryout.
To this point there's been little to no momentum toward the idea of bringing in a veteran option. A lot of the pressure will be placed on the shoulders of Kellen Moore and the three other former QBs on staff -- Scott Tolzien, Doug Nussmeier and Scott Linehan -- to develop those players, and quickly.
"There’s been, lots of quarterback rooms in the league over the years where they’ve got a young group and they’ve got to develop them," Loomis said, "and I ... wouldn’t say it’s ideal, but that’s the hand we got dealt with.”
Moore has said it will be a three-way QB competition between Rattler, Haener and Shough, which will get off to its first steps this week when the Saints kick off their first set of three OTA sessions.