The New Orleans Saints walked away with a loss in a regular season opener that came down to the wire, but there were some real positives to go along with the very clear negatives.
The team has penalty woes to clean up after a 20-13 loss to the Cardinals and has to deliver in the red zone, but GM Mickey Loomis said he liked what he saw on the team's maiden voyage under new head coach Kellen Moore.
"You walk away, obviously, feeling badly about the loss but I also came away kind of encouraged, encouraged about a lot of things," Loomis told Mike Hoss on WWL Radio. "We had a lot of new players, moving parts, new staff and ... I thought we moved the ball pretty well. I thought we played really good defense, particularly in the second half. We had a couple of explosive plays that got away from us in the first half, led to points for them, and, you know, we had some good things that have happened that didn’t lead to points for us."
Hear the full interview with Saints GM Mickey Loomis, as well as an interview with Saints legend Terron Armstead, in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
One of the more surprising elements of the game was QB Spencer Rattler dropping back and throwing 46 passes in the game, something that certainly won't be the expectation going forward, Loomis said.
"That’s a fact. We don’t really want him to throw him 46 times," Loomis said. "I think when you look back at it and you just review the game, yea, we had five sacks, that was really good. We had a lot of pressure on the quarterback and we only gave up one sack and I thought Spencer manipulated and moved around the pocket in a good fashion that kept us from having sacks."
The Saints also avoided any turnovers on offense, aided by a timely Cardinals penalty that wiped out one interception, but didn't get any in their own right. There were opportunities, though, and the Saints will look to take advantage of those when they host the 49ers this week, a team reeling from a host of injury issues.
Related
━━
MORE FROM LOOMIS
On Alvin Kamara being effective as ever
“His superpower is balance and he runs really hard. He’s just a really, really smart player and, you know, to his credit. He pays close attention to his body, his physical condition. He has an offseason program that he does an individualized offseason program that he does that I don’t think a lot of guys could keep up with and that’s a credit to him and obviously we need him to be at his best and I think that he is.”
━━
On the trade for Devaughn Vele
"Devaughn was an interesting deal for us because we had had kind of had our eye on him from the very beginning, months ago. We talked about players that might be available. We knew he would never get cut. He was a really good player for Denver but they had a lot of receivers that they liked and a number of guys that had the size and skillset that Devaughn has so obviously we have a relationship with the Denver people. … In this case, you know, we talked to them a lot about Devaughn and I know that he didn’t really want to trade him, but when you have an abundance at a position sometimes it kind of forces your hand if you get the right offer.”
Related
━━
On first look at Brandon Staley's defense with Saints
“I thought it was good for a change in scheme for us and you know, we have some returning players on defense in, you know, Demario and Cam and Pete, guys that what they’re being asked to do is a little different and I thought that first game went really well against a good offense and, yea, I would say that that was a good performance, a winning-type performance by the defense, but we didn't win so it’s not a winning performance, obviously, but there was a lot of good things. We’ve got to clean up a few things, some mental errors and a few other penalties that happened, some of them were circumstantial and then obviously you can’t have explosive plays, that’s going to get you beat in a tight game.”
Tune into WWL Radio (AM-870; FM-105.3 or the Audacy app) every Tuesday throughout the season at 6 p.m. to hear exclusive interviews with Saints GM Mickey Loomis.