To say there was emotion on the face of the hometown kid Foster Moreau after a crucial missed opportunity late in a loss to the Jaguars was an understatement.
The former Jesuit and LSU standout had an opportunity for a game-tying TD bounce off his fingertips on the Saints' penultimate play of the game. He could be seen on the bench with his head down, clearly distraught, as the final seconds ticked off of his team's 4th loss in the past 5 games.
"Unacceptable," Moreau repeated twice as he spoke to reporters, staring off at the opposite end of the room, but his mind clearly never leaving the corner of the end zone where he assuredly spent many childhood moments envisioning exactly that type of moment.
“In front of every man woman and child I’ve ever known. It’s a dark place to be, it’s the National Football League," Moreau said. "It doesn’t come down to one play, but it comes down to one play. The team fought. The team fought as hard as we did and it’s just unacceptable. It’s just pathetic."
But one thing every one of Moreau's teammates made clear after the game is that this game wasn't on him, even though he was involved in a flashbulb moment. The team knew it had to rally around him, not in spite of him.
Center Erik McCoy got emotional in his own right as he spoke about his teammate in the locker room.
"A couple of things, No. 1 he saved my ass a couple of times today on some blocks that I missed, saved my ass completely," McCoy said." And No. 2 that man is literally the glue that holds our offense together."
The larger message: Keep your head up, as tough as that might be, because this Saints team isn't giving up, and he's going to be needed again. That's what Alvin Kamara told his teammate as Moreau sat on the bench, head bowed. The game doesn't come down to one play, and the team knows it had plenty of opportunities to make that type of play unnecessary in the first place.
Foster Moreau's teammates had his back after he couldn't come up with the potential game-tying TD.
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 20, 2023
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"He know he should’ve caught it. Anybody in that position right there should’ve caught it. We’re pros," Kamara said with his standard AK bluntness. "But, man, Foster ... if there’s anybody out there that cares, that’s uplifting his teammates, that’s doing everything he can to try to get a win and try to uplift everybody else to get them in the right mindframe to win, man, it’s him. I’m not worried about that."
That message was echoed by quarterback Derek Carr, possibly Moreau's closest teammate after spending several years as teammates with the Raiders.
“Everybody in the stands is mad at him, but it doesn’t come down to one play, and so our job as brothers and as family, as teammates, is to go rally around him," Carr said. "I’ve been in that moment ... and you feel like everybody hates you, and our job as teammates is no matter what the situation, good or bad, put your arm around him and keep him going, keep him pushing, and so to see our teammates reacting that way shows me we have a good group, because I’ve seen moments like that where everybody just starts pointing fingers at that one play, or if the kicker misses one at the end, they just point at him.
"There’s 160 other plays that could’ve been changed throughout the game. I’ve never been a believer that you just point just because it happens in that moment. There’s so many things that we could’ve done that wouldn’t have put him in that situation.”
As difficult as it might be, Moreau and his teammates will have to take the extended break to put that game behind them and find answers to get a frustrating season back on track. The team has a 10-day layoff before a trip out to Indianapolis for a showdown with the Colts.
