Remember all the way back to Week 2 of the 2021 season? A lot has changed since then, but the Saints are the team in the rematch with the Panthers that still has playoff ambitions.
On the Saints' end, they'll be hopeful to get back many of the 20-plus players unavailable for Week 16 due to COVID. The Panthers won't have Christian McCaffrey, they've fired offensive coordinator Joe Brady, and it appears Sam Darnold will be back as the starting quarterback.
For the Saints, it'll likely be Taysom Hill back in the saddle after a week out, WWL Radio color analyst Deuce McAllister said this week on SportsTalk with Bobby Hebert and Mike Detillier.
“I think you can spot play some of those young guys, but you have to limit the amount of plays," McAllister said. "But I do expect Taysom … he’ll take back over that role, and you have to get some of those other guys filling that role as well.”
Listen to McAllister's full interview below. Can't see the player? Click here.
Hill was one of several players that returned from the COVID list Wednesday, though the team had the day off. With Hill and backup Trevor Siemian both unavailable, it was rookie Ian Book making his NFL debut with a roster of mainly backups around him. The offense, predictably, struggled without so many key players.
The game looked similarly to the first time the Saints met up with Carolina. With several players injured in Week 1 and multiple assistant coaches out with COVID, starting quarterback Jameis Winston was harassed by the rush all day and the Saints managed just 7 points on a Taysom Hill touchdown set up by a Darnold turnover.
That was part of a 3-0 Panthers start that set them up as an NFC South favorite over the early stretch of the season, but they've won just 2 of their 12 games since and have already been eliminated from postseason contention.
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Star running back Alvin Kamara struggled to find running room in that first matchup, which was similarly the case against the Dolphins. As the Saints' best offensive weapon, shutting him down often means shutting the entire offense down. He's faced almost exclusively heavy boxes throughout the season, with defenses loading up with eight or nine players close to the line of scrimmage gambling that the Saints' passing attack can't win on the edges. More often than not, that gamble has been a successful one.
“You’ve got to be able to have success on 1st and 2nd downs. I think that’s a critical piece of it, because very, very rarely will you have situations where you have 3rd and 19 and 20 and I’ll just give you a draw and pick up the first down," McAllister said. "That’s one of the things that Alvin did and that’s kind of an angry, frustrated run for him, because he’s not getting a light box. They are putting seven, eight, nine guys in the box and telling the Saints ‘you can’t beat us beat us passing the football. You can’t win out on the edges or you can’t pick up the blitz, the stunt.’ We’ve just struggled with it. We’ve struggled with it. And I think the approach to Carolina is you have to be able to win some of those one-on-ones outside. You have to be able to trust what you’re doing, and that is receiver-wise, quarterback-wise.”
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But the Saints aren't alone in questions at the quarterback position. The Panthers announced that Darnold would get the start, a sensible choice considering his impressive performance the first two times these teams met. But Carolina coach Matt Rhule also left the door open for a platoon with veteran Cam Newton, who returned to the Panthers midway through the season after one season spent with the Patriots.
Newton will likely see action in short-yardage situations, but regardless of who the quarterback is, the Saints' goals and recipe to stop the Panthers' offense won't change.
"It doesn’t matter who is at quarterback, you’ve got to be able to do your job. You’ve got to create pressure. They can’t allow either quarterback to feel comfortable," McAllister said. "If you go back to that first game we played against them, we didn’t get a ton of pressure at all on Sam Darnold. … The Saints can’t afford to go out there, particularly defensively, and play like that."
The Saints enter the final two games with a path to the postseason, but needing a bit of help. The 49ers, Eagles, Vikings, Falcons and Saints are all within a game of the final two postseason slots, meaning much can change. But for New Orleans, all they can do is win and hope for the best. That hopeful stretch officially begins at 3:25 p.m. on Sunday at the Caesars Superdome.