This has been a very challenging season, and that’s putting it as mildly as possible.
The Saints have not won back-to-back games all year. Now they hope for a miracle 4-game winning streak to close out the year at 8-9 and see if more chaos ensues around them.
Most 5-9 seasons are riddled with mistakes and injuries. In that way the 2022 Saints campaign is right where you’d expect it to be. But along the disjointed path, the Saints have also rewritten the team’s record book far more times than a 5-9 team should. Not all of those are good records as you might expect. Still, any new records in such a middling season seem out of place.
THE GAME | Saints (5-9) at Browns (6-8)
- When: Noon, Saturday, Dec. 24
- Where: First Energy Stadium, Cleveland, Ohio
- Betting: Browns -2.5
- TV: CBS
- Listen: WWL AM-870; FM-105.3 & the Audacy app
- Pregame: Fans First Take with Jeff Nowak & Steve Geller, 8-10 a.m.; Countdown to Kickoff with Bobby Hebert & Kristian Garic, 10-noon
And we begin with our game here in Cleveland, whereas I write, the feels-like temperature is 25-below zero. Yes, BELOW zero. Oh, and there’s also those pesky and persistent 40-mile-per-hour winds.
The expected temperature for the 1 p.m. local kickoff in First Energy Stadium is a whopping 12 degrees. The feels-like temperature – which, if it feels like that temperature isn’t that the only one that matters – will come in at minus-10.
You’ve probably guessed by now but, yes, that will set a new record for being the coldest game in Saints history. Yay! History has never felt so numbing.
But it’s not alone in the record books. This season started out with a record-setting outing in Week 1 and a 16-point 4th quarter comeback in a win over the Atlanta Falcons, the largest such rally in franchise history. Oh, the start of what’s sure to be a magical season. Well, not so much.
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In Week 13 the Saints found the other end of that record, blowing a 13-point lead in the final 5 minutes on the road against the Tampa Bay Bucs, a defeat that is still haunting even as the Saints continue to hope to narrowly sneak into the playoffs. They’ve lost bigger 4th quarter leads, but none in the final 5 minutes of a game. This one will sting for years to come, at least for me.
During this 5-9 campaign the Saints have been on both ends of a shutout, holding the Raiders off the scoreboard in a 24-0 win, and failing to change the number on the scoreboard in a 13-0 defeat at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers. The Saints have only pitched a shutout 16 times in 56 years. Saints Head Coach Dennis Allen has been a part of 3 of them alone since 2017 (Miami in 2017, Tampa in 2021, and Vegas this year). That’s pretty impressive. But (yes, there’s a but) when the Saints were shut out by the 49ers 13-0 in late November it ended a 332-game streak without being shut out.
That’s a lot of games, but that streak is now at 2. Starting something new is hard.
Unless your name is Rashid Shaheed, that is. The return ace from Weber State has already made history with the Saints, and it didn’t involve a punt or kick return. The first time he touched the ball was a fly sweep against the Bengals, and he took it for a 44-yard touchdown. His next touch was a 53-yard scoring strike from Andy Dalton in a loss to the Arizona Cardinals, making him the first player in Saints history to score touchdowns on his first two touches.
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There are other moments that we’d all prefer not to talk about. Like later in that loss to Arizona in Week 7 when Dalton tossed back-to-back pick-6s late in the first half. In the end it was a 95-second stretch during which the Cardinals scored 22 points. Tough to win that way. Ouch.
And we’re not done. Wil Lutz’s 60-yard field goal in London tied Morten Andersen for the 2nd-longest field goal in Saints history. Had the demons not allowed a double-doink from 61 yards just minutes later, he would have the No. 2 spot alone.
Honestly, a double-doink in London should have been the biggest red flag that 2022 was not going to be a normal year. It hasn’t been, and Sunday’s weather is going to be something like we’ve never seen before, because 5-9 or not, it’s just another entrant in a season of firsts. Maybe this one can land on the happy side of history.
Stay warm. Go Saints.
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