This is a New Orleans Saints team that is 2-5, and things just seem to get more difficult every week.
Whether it's a new star player out with injury or a new and fantastic way to lose, each week seems to carry more weight on a team that appears dangerously close to being buried under it. But to a man, the players aren't turning on each other. It's a group that knows things can and will get better, head coach Dennis Allen says.
"Frustrated, but not not despondent. ... We still, everything that we want to accomplish is still right there out in front of us," Allen said after a 42-34 loss to the Cardinals. "And I'm fully confident that this team will will will put together a string of wins and turn things around."
That turnaround remains possible, but the margin for error is gone. With 10 games remaining, the Saints would have to win at seven of them to finish 9-8, the record that wasn't good enough to make the playoffs in 2021. It'd take an 8-2 finish to get to double-digit wins. For a team that's scuffled to five losses in seven weeks, that feels far from likely.
Still, it's a team that now has 10 days to lick its wounds and find a way to string some wins together. The Saints were a team playing without its top two WRs (Michael Thomas and Jarvis Landry), top three CBs (Marshon Lattimore, Paulson Adebo and Bradley Roby) and several other key players. It's a team that still has questions at cornerback and has forced just four turnovers in seven games.
The Saints nearly matched that number in just interceptions in Week 7, with Andy Dalton tossing three of them, two of which were returned for touchdowns. Allen raised eyebrows with his positive assessment of his QB's performance coming out of halftime, indicating that he wanted more of the same from Dalton. Allen addressed his QB's play, and didn't hold the pick-6s against the QB. The first should've been caught by Marquez Callaway. The second came after Dalton was hit on the throw. The first interception came in the red zone and definitely merited criticism, the head coach said.
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"I think our team knows that they're held accountable," Allen said. "I don't think there's any question that they're held accountable."
To a man, every player in the locker room agreed with that sentiment. Dalton confirmed that he was targeting Olave, and the hit from the defender affected the throw. Confidence isn't fragile, Mark Ingram said, and it's just a matter of getting on the right track.
The issue is that track has been hard to find, and it's possible that when this team does manage to find it -- it's far too late to get where this team was hoping to go.
"We have the right guys in this locker room. We have the right guys on this team, the right coaching staff and we believe in each other," Ingram said. "And obviously we know there's gonna be a lot outside noise, we have things locked in. We're not gonna hang our heads and feel sorry for ourselves, nobody's gonna feel sorry for us."
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That's true. But there are serious questions. One will come at quarterback, with Jameis Winston appearing to be closer and closer to healthy. Will he return to his starting role? How can the team incorporate Taysom Hill and Rashid Shaheed more into the action? The return ace had his second consecutive game of scoring a long touchdown and not touching the ball again. Can this defense get back to being a dominant unit, and not one that allows big plays, misses tackles regularly and allows Eno Benjamin to run for nearly 100 yards and a touchdown in a moment where the defense desperately needed a stop? The answers to those questions might determine just how far this descent can go, and just how nice it will feel to be the Philadelphia Eagles -- who own the Saints' 2023 first-round pick -- in the upcoming draft season.
"Everybody's sticking together," Dalton said. "And that's the only thing that we can worry about. We've got to worry about us. And the only way we're gonna get out of this feeling this this way is to pull all together in the same direction. And we will."
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