There's no denying it: The New Orleans Saints walked into a primetime showdown with their biggest rival. It didn't go well.
But as Audacy NFL Insider Mark Schlereth pointed out on WWL's Second Guess show this week, the more important thing than what went wrong is ... how do the Saints respond?
"I mean, listen, if you play this game long enough you’re going to get your a** kicked every now and again," Schlereth told WWL's Steve Geller, Bobby Hebert and Deuce McAllister, "and it is embarrassing, but I tell you what, I say this all the time. … I never learned anything about myself in the good times because I was too busy patting myself on the back, it was the tough times where I learned something about myself."
Hear the full interview with Audacy NFL Inside Mark Schlereth in the player above.
"You’ve got to be really honest with yourself," Schlereth continued. "You’ve got to really look at the film and see where you can improve, and then you’ve got to go to work. … You’ve got to be able to flush it."
So what exactly have the 1-3 Saints learned? We'll find that out when they take on the 4-0 Minnesota Vikings in Week 5, a game that appears even more significant with an extended road trip and trip to Paris on the immediate horizon.
The heavy pressure scheme employed by defensive coordinator Brian Flores has been remarkably effective through the first month of the season. Minnesota leads the NFL in sacks and scoring defense, and the Saints surrendered a league-high 25 pressures to an undermanned Falcons pass rush last week.
"They’re going to blitz you, I think right now they’re blitzing over 60% of the time, which is ridiculous, you know, so you’ve got to have a great plan for that," Schlereth said, "because the one thing about teams that blitz ... we begged them to blitz because we were good at picking it up, we knew what we were doing and there’s plenty of big plays to be made for teams that want to bring pressure and want to bring the blitz."
The Saints will host the Vikings at noon Sunday inside the Caesars Superdome. Catch all the action on WWL and Audacy.
