The New Orleans Saints earned a less-than-pretty win over a struggling Bears squad this week. Key word: A win.
On WWL this week Dennis Allen made one thing clear, even as his team looks to fix the issues that dogged them in a 24-17 win to move to 5-4 on the year.
Listen to the full, exclusive interview with Saints head coach Dennis Allen in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
"We’re never gonna apologize for winning," Allen said. "It wasn’t our best performance overall, but yet it was enough to get the win.”
And there's a point to be made there. The Saints now lead the NFC South and are right in the pack of NFC teams sitting at 5 wins. Only two teams, the 8-1 Eagles and 6-2 49ers, are currently ahead of them in the win column.
But frustration is clear, particularly as it pertains to a defense that's now allowed multiple scoring drives in the first half of the past four games. The Saints went in at halftime tied 14-14 with the help of a missed Cairo Santos kick and responses from the offense to each of those Chicago drives, but it's still concerning. UDFA Tyson Bagent had two touchdown passes to TE Cole Kmet and was able to pick up significant chunks on the ground, another issue for this year's defense. He finished the game with 70 yards rushing and an average of more than 8 yards per carry.
"There’s no question that there was some plays there that we didn’t execute as well as we needed to," Allen said, "and those things got addressed [on Monday] and we made the corrections that we needed to make."
Some of those issues came on third down, which the Saints forced just five of in the first half and allowed conversions on three of them. As the game wore on it was turnovers forced that swung the result. Paulson Adebo had a pair of interceptions and a forced fumble that he recovered. Marcus Maye also hawked a Bagent pass for a pick, and Demario Davis forced a fumble, recovered by Pete Werner, that iced the result.
"Games are hard to win in this league," Allen said. "You see it every week. You see teams that everybody on the outside thinks, oh man, they’re gonna get killed, and they end up beating a team that’s got a better record. So you’ve got to cherish these wins and correct the mistakes that you made and then get ready to go on to the next one.”
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MORE FROM DENNIS ALLEN
Has the OL protection improved?
“There’s no question. Look, I think, you know, obviously pass protection is, there’s a lot that goes into that. There’s obviously the offensive line. There’s backs and tight ends that are involved in protection. There’s, you know, receivers running routes, getting open. There’s a quarterback throwing the ball with rhythm and timing. I think all of those things have improved over the last few weeks and I think that’s, it’s kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg, you know. Was it the pass protection that allowed us to be a little bit more effective in the passing game? Was it our effectiveness of being able to get open and get the ball out of our hands? Has that helped the protection? I think both of those things have occurred.”
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On the run game
“We’ve got to do a better job in the run game, on both sides of the ball. We have to be more effective running the football offensively, running the football with the running backs offensively. I think that’s an area that we’ve got to improve in terms of what we’re doing schematically, in terms of how we’re operating in the run game offensively, and the same thing defensively. I think we’ve got to do a better job of stopping the run and in particular, we’ve got to do a better job of not allowing these quarterback scrambles, which have been probably our achilles heel in terms of our run defense, the biggest factor has been, we’ve allowed the quarterbacks to run for way too many yards on quarterback scrambles. So that’s something we’ve got to work on, that’s something we’ve got to clean up. … It’s a frustrating deal and we’ve got to get it corrected.”
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On Cam Jordan
“Yea, look, I think this was one of Cam’s better games. He’s had, you know, a lot of games where he’s had some effect but maybe it all hadn’t shown up on the stat sheet, but I thought he affected the game both in terms of disruption and the production on the stat sheet, so that was good to see and look, Cam has been a great player for us and you’re exactly right. We don’t pay guys for what they’ve done in the past. We pay guys fro what they can do for us going forward and we feel like Cam’s still got a lot of good football left in him.”
