Dennis Allen is no stranger to adding an expletive to a sentence to emphasize a point, but it typically seems like a calculated decision.
After a 26-24 loss to the Falcons that was riddled with injuries and mistakes, it was clearly unplanned but summed up the situation about better than any family-friendly words could.
Sucks to lose a game like that, those are the kind that f****** rip your heart out," Allen said, before wincing and adding: "Excuse me."
No worries, coach. Other than a few producers scrambling to hit the dump button on their live broadcasts, we're all right there with you.
Unlike a week prior when the Saints were dominated on the stat sheet but fell victim to mistakes in a similar-feeling defeat, it was New Orleans that did just about everything but win in this game. The Saints outgained the Falcons 366-315. They got into the end zone three times, compared to an Atlanta offense that had to settle for four field goals on the day, the final of which marked the winning margin from 58 yards away.
"There’s no magic formula for you," said WWL's Deuce McAllister. "You’ve got to fix it and correct it and if not, some other guys are gonna have to do it.”
But it was the mistakes that were difficult to reconcile. There was the uncharacteristic mistake by Rashid Shaheed as a ball clanked off his hands near the goal line for the Falcons first score of the TD after the defense forced a punt. There was a batted ball on a screen that went for a pick-6 after the Saints fought their way back to take control of the game. Then there was a costly pass interference call on Paulson Adebo, his third of the day but the first that was accepted by Atlanta, to set up a game-winning kick on a drive that generated zero total offensive yards.
It was the type of loss that "winning teams" seem to avoid and "losing teams" seem to find all too often. Over the last two weeks the Saints have been the latter, something that Alvin Kamara summed up well.
"You play a lot of football in this league you realize that blowing people out and doing all that, that s**t don’t matter. That’s fanfare, you know what I’m saying, that’s cool. You don’t get no points for that," Kamara said. "These types of games? These are the types of games that matter, you close out when it’s nail-biting, one score, these are the types of games that matter to us. These are the types of games that the winning teams win, and when you look further down the line and you get to December and January, you look at those teams that’s playing, you look back on their season and they’re able to close these games out."
To this point in the Dennis Allen era, closing out tight games has not come easily. The Saints have an overall record of 8-14 in one-score games, though not all are created equally. Several of those games featured major second half deficits that represented dramatic comebacks that fell short more than close games. A year ago it was the offense that was failing to answer the bell more often than not. A pair of losses to the Texans and Jaguars in the span of five days will stick out the most, with a pair of last-minute drives to potentially tie the game failing on 4th down deep in opposing territory. The Saints gave themselves a chance, but in the end it wasn't enough.
In Dennis Allen's first two seasons there was only one game that saw the Saints score to take the lead in the 4th quarter only to give it back. That game also came against a Kirk Cousins led team, a 27-24 loss to the Vikings in London. It's a different story this year with a rebuilt offense, but still a familiar feeling. In back-to-back games the Saints offense has capitalized in those scenarios with drives for a go-ahead touchdown in the final two minutes. In both instances the defense, admittedly undermanned, came onto the field needing a stop and couldn't get the job done. It's a scenario that makes things feel closer to breaking to the positive, but in some ways is even more aggravating and heartwrenching because no lead feels safe late in a game.
“We just had to make the plays, you know, play against Philly we ran into each other," Allen said. "This one we just kind of got beat, they made a good play. We didn’t make the type of play that we needed to, and look, that’s what these games are going to end up coming down to. When you want to be a good team, we’re gonna play in a lot of tightly contested games and we’ve got to find ways to win those things. We’ve put ourselves in those positions, but we’re not making the plays at the end of the day to win it and that’s what you have to do in our league.”
The Saints have an extra day to prepare for the two-time defending champion Chiefs on Monday Night Football, a team that always seems to have the answer in the clutch.
"I know we’ve got a good football team in that locker room," Allen said. "Now, we have to play better. You can’t spot a team 14 points, a good team, and expect to win those type of games. The fact that you come back and put yourself in a position to win that tells me that we’ve got a good football team, but we have to be better. We have to play better, we’ve got to coach them better."
Can that good team we're hearing about turn into a winning team? We'll have to wait and see.
