There was no hiding it on Thursday: The Saints welcomed Sean Payton back to New Orleans, and even standing on the opposing sideline, it was his team running the Caesars Superdome.
It was a game that saw the Saints outmatched at seemingly every turn in a 33-10 defeat, the second blowout loss in just a matter of days and a fifth consecutive loss after a 2-0 start. Things were so lopsided and uneven that former star cornerback Richard Sherman on the Prime Video halftime show questioned the team's effort level to a fairly extreme degree for someone who knows what it takes to compete in the NFL.
“I’m confused, I’m vexed, I’m perplexed. … I don’t understand this," Sherman said to a national audience. "It seems like they’re trying to get their coach fired. That’s the effort their playing with.”
The words certainly caught attention quickly and became a talking point after the game, particularly as the game continued to spiral in the second half. The Saints defense allowed 200-plus rushing yards for a second game and no Broncos ball-carrier averaged less than 5.8 yards per carry.
Saints head coach Dennis Allen kept it simple when asked: "I don't agree with him."
Veteran safety Tyrann Mathieu, who knows Sherman personally, said he intended to talk to him about it after the game.
"He’s got a right to his own opinion. I obviously, I mean, he’s not out there," Mathieu said. "He don’t know what the hell is going on, for real,"
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It's unsurprising to hear coaches and players defending their effort, but that's the simplest answer. Payton may be an offensive wizard, but the Broncos have been anything but a juggernaut in this game, arriving at the Superdome with the 29th ranked total offense, and 23rd ranked rushing offense.
The issue is the simple question: Either this team is talented enough to compete and the effort level isn't there ... or the team is competing as hard as it can, and the talent level isn't there. There's not much middle ground in that conversation, and the team has assured the media repeatedly that it feels it has the right people in the building.
Perhaps that's changed with a list of injuries that only seems to get longer and longer. Before the game the Saints sent WR Rashid Shaheed to injured reserve, and he's done for the season. During the game they lost CB Paulson Adebo to a broken femur. He underwent surgery and he's done for the year. They also didn't have starters in the form of:
- QB Derek Carr (oblique)
- C Erik McCoy (groin surgery)
- RG Cesar Ruiz (knee)
- LG Lucas Patrick (chest)
- TE Taysom Hill (rib)
- WR Chris Olave (concussion)
- S Will Harris
- LB Pete Werner
Marshon Lattimore finished the game on the bench with a hamstring injury. That meant the Saints were down a grand total of 11 of their Week 1 starters. Allen wouldn't acknowledge the word "quit" in his postgame comments and said he wasn't worried about his job, but he did admit the injuries have been difficult to overcome and can have a demoralizing effect.
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"I think guys are trying, I think guys are working, you know, we’re dealing with a lot of injuries right now," Allen said, "and that’s not an excuse, OK, I don’t want anybody to misconstrue that as an excuse, but it is part of an – I mean, it is an issue for us, and I think all of us are trying to fight through that.”
The issue is the track record, particularly when it comes to Thursday Night Football. Since Dennis Allen took over in 2022 the Saints have appeared on a short week four times, here's how those games have gone:
- 2022, Week 7: Cardinals 42, Saints 34
- 2023, Week 7: Jaguars 31, Saints 24
- 2023, Week 16: Rams 30, Saints 22
- 2024, Week 7: Broncos 33, Saints 10
Aside from the consistent placement of Week 7 for those matchups, there's another concerning trend: In all four matchups the Saints have trailed by at least 15 points entering the final quarter. In the other three matchups, two with Derek Carr and one with Andy Dalton at quarterback, the Saints fought back to make it a one-score game. That was not the case this time around and underscored the bleak tenor of the game.
"I don’t think we’re playing with a lot of energy, like, Thursday Night Football is one of those that, more than any other, Monday Night, Sunday Night – Thursday Night Football you’ve got to come out with energy. ... We both played on Sunday, we’ve got three days to recover and you’ve got a game. The team that comes out and just puts their mind in a place where, shoot, it’s Thursday, you know it’s a short week, you’ve just got to go play," Alvin Kamara said. "The team that can go and do that, that’s the team that’s gonna win and I don’t think we did that today. I think we came out flat. I think we just came out and it was Thursday, it was a Thursday and we had a game, it wasn’t Thursday Night Football.”
The Broncos clearly did that. That Saints did not, in fact, they've lost their last six Thursday games dating back to 2020. It's been a night of horrors for the Saints and particularly in the Superdome.
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Something has to change, and it has to change soon. The Saints sit at 2-5. Mickey Loomis told WWL Radio last week that it was important to "look beyond the results," and those are the words of a GM that sounds like he doesn't have his finger hovering over the button of a head coach firing. Still, the type of results of this past week and effort questions have to weigh into that conversation.
The Saints have 10 days to get things sorted about before traveling to face the L.A. Chargers, a team that'll be on short rest but one that beat this same Broncos team soundly in Week 6. If the results aren't there, and more importantly a veritable shift to the positive in the effort levels, the road back might not be so smooth.
“You have to stand up and lead, and that’s what I have to do, that’s what our coaches have to do. That’s what the leaders on our team have to do," Allen said, "because we’re the only ones that can get us out of this, OK, nobody – it’s not like we’re gonna have a draft in the middle of the season, you know, nobody is gonna be coming in here to be the savior. We’re gonna have to do it ourselves.”
Demario Davis had similar words, though shared in his eloquent and metaphor-laden fashion, as he sat in his locker following the game. Davis, and several other Saints veterans, were around in 2021 when the Saints had their last five-game losing streak. That was the final year of the Sean Payton era, and saw the team bounce back with wins in four of their final five games, not unlike we saw a year ago with Allen's squad.
"You have to trust your process. You have to trust the people that are with you. You have to stay with you," Davis said. "You have to stay with the people in the boat, because you win together, you lose together, and as long as you can stay united and make it through the other side of the storm, because one thing about storms, they gonna always pass, just like the storm passed in ‘21 or any other time, they always pass, and what you’re gonna look back on is gonna be how did I handle myself when I was in that storm, and I think that’s what I want to be proud of myself. That’s what I want to be proud of my teammates, that was I want to be proud of my organization that we respond the right way when we’re in adversity, and we’re being challenged."