I’ll just keep this blunt: The New Orleans Saints shipped out to Seattle and got absolutely taken apart.
They lost on offense. They lost on defense. They got demolished on special teams. It was as thorough a beatdown as you’ll see in the NFL, and if you’ll believe it, the 44-13 scoreline makes the game look closer than it actually was with the Seahawks pulling their starting QB early in the 4th quarter.
So what’s the fallout?
Scroll below for our stock watch column, which — obviously — features a lot more down than up after an ugly day out west.
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STOCK DOWN
Special teams
The Saints have always been a franchise that devoted ample attention and resources to special teams, and in doing so we’d often hear about just how important that phase is to winning games — even if it all too often goes unnoticed.
Well we sure noticed it today, and not for the right reasons. For the third consecutive game Blake Grupe missed a kick, but at least this one was from outside 50. He still needs to hit from 52 consistently to have a job, but it’s at least a justifiable miss.
No, the biggest problem was in the punt game. The term “outkicked your coverage” is a cliche for a reason, and that looks like exactly what happened on a 61-yard Kai Kroeger boot in the first quarter. The Saints coverage was brutal to watch and Tory Horton took the ball 95 yards to the house. Oof.
Oh, and on the next kick? That was an unblocked rusher to the leg side of your left-footed kicker. Just poor execution.
Oh, and don’t forget the 60-yard kick return by Dareke Young. Special teams was the reason that after three offensive possessions the Seahawks average starting field position was the Saints 35 yard line. Special teams was the reason that the Seahawks were able to absolutely dominate a game in which the Saints dominated the time of possession and held the Seahawks to 8 yards rushing in the first half.
I also didn’t think that the Saints did a much to be happy about in the kickoff return game. The Seahawks clearly felt like they had a good gameplan for Kendre Miller, because they kept kicking it to the young RB and stonewalling him repeatedly. I’m starting to wonder if throwing Shaheed back there as a changeup might be a necessary thing to at least force teams to do something different. They won't kick it to him, but they'll have to at least do something different.
There were plenty of other issues to point to, but the failures in special teams are what made this game seem impossible to win. The Saints opted to move on from captain and special teams ace J.T. Gray ahead of Week 1 in a questionable move. Kellen Moore said the Saints aren’t looking at personnel changes at this point because "our job is to get better right now.” Fair enough, but if that group continues to be an issue the seat under first-year coordinator Phil Galiano will start heating up fast.
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Defense covering … anybody
Sam Darnold only threw the ball 18 times in this game before he was pulled early in the 4th quarter, looking a lot more like LSU rolling over Southeastern than a matchup of NFL teams. It was enough. He competed 14 of those passes for 218 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
He faced virtually zero legitimate pressure, and when he did it didn’t matter because he seemed to always find a receiver with no one anywhere near him. That statement might be a bit hyperbolic, but that’s how it felt watching from field level. The Seahawks weren’t just moving the ball, they were doing it with almost zero interference. On one deep ball to Jaxon Smith-Njigba the Saints had three players traveling with him in coverage. None of them located the ball and Darnold dropped it inn a bucket like the defenders weren’t even there.
And then there was the touchdown below where it seemed all too easy for the Seahawks to get their best receiver isolated on the Saints' rookie safety.
Don’t get me wrong, Darnold played well, but I’m getting a little exhausted of this narrative that every QB the Saints play has an incredible day. The Saints are simply making them look like superstars. I don’t know if it’s an issue with the coverage range of linebackers. Maybe they’re being asked to do too much in coverage and you simply don’t have the pieces necessary to run Brandon Staley’s scheme at its peak level, but they’ve got to figure something out. There’s just way too much space to operate in these zone coverages the Saints are dropping into, and that never seems to be the case when the Saints offense is on the field.
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Mistakes … again
The Saints had 11 accepted penalties in this game, and the scary part is that’s not even a season high.
Here’s the list (including the two that were declined):
Bryan Bresee: unnecessary roughness, -15
Torricelli Simpkins: false start, -5
Kelvin Banks: false start, -5
Chris Olave: false start, -5
Kelvin Banks: offensive holding, -10
Asim Richards: offensive holding, declined
Davon Godchaux: roughing the passer, -15
Kelvin Banks: false start, -5
Chris Olave: illegal shift, declined
Fadil Diggs: offside, -5
Nathan Shepherd: defensive holding, -5
Justin Reid: offside, -5
Xavier Truss: false start, -5
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Quite a list. The Saints have had refs out at practice each of the past two weeks, but it doesn’t seem to have helped much. In fairness, the atmosphere doesn’t get much more difficult to manage that what they have out in Seattle and the Saints simply didn’t handle it well. It’s also worth noting that six penalties were called against rookies and/or backup offensive linemen who are being asked to do a bit more than you’d want to ask from them at this stage, but there’s no way around that.
What made this game most frustrating to watch is that the Saints simply didn't seem ready to play, and after a similarly uneven start against the 49ers, that’s a disturbing trend.
It’s easy to overreact to one game that went horribly wrong and forget that this team seemed to punch above its weight in Weeks 1 and 2, but you’re only as good as your last game, and right now the Saints’ last game is among the ugliest they’ve played in a long time.
Cam Jordan said it well: “It’s self-inflicted wounds, man. We’re not a good enough team to overcome that right now and ... it clearly shows every game.”
It's gut-check time for Kellen Moore's group. This is not the type of team that can beat opposing teams when it’s busy beating up on itself. I’m beginning to lose confidence that this won’t be an issue all season.
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A few more
This game was so uneven that it’s tough to pinpoint individual difficulties without looking back at the film, but I’m getting a little weary of Kellen Moore's risk-averse gameplan. Kicking a field goal from the 5-yard line to cut a lead to 32? I mean, come on. It’s also absurd to me that we’ve seen one deep ball to Shaheed through three weeks (the opening drive against San Fran). With such an array of speed receivers, not giving them chances over the top feels like football malpractice. I don’t know, it just seems like protecting the QB has gone a little overboard. It’s hard to have confidence in a team when the head coach doesn’t seem to think the training wheels can come off. Chris Olave (10 catches for 57 yards) and Shaheed (4 for 42) are team players and they’ll do what they’re asked, but they’re getting frustrated and I don’t blame them. … Alontae Taylor is an excellent player and I understand why he’s in the star role, but man, the missed tackles are getting frustrating. He’s in the right spot way too much of the time to not be making more big plays on defense. I think he might be better suited on the outside where he can tackle wide receivers more often.
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STOCK UP
Negativity
This is kind of cheating, but there’s absolutely no way I can find three good things to say about that game … so I’m stealing my first stock up as a sneaky stock down, and that is: Everyone who was negative about the Saints, claiming they were the worst team in the NFL, that they weren’t worth watching, that they’d be a free win for basically everyone on their schedule. Well, the Saints will have those people feeling pretty smart on Monday morning.
It’s only bulletin board material if it isn’t true. When you put down a dud like the Saints did, it’s just accurate. Now, listen, maybe I'm too close to the project, but I don’t think the Saints are nearly as bad as they showed out in Seattle. There’s talent on this team, but not nearly enough to win games when they’re playing with errors and poor execution.
I won’t go so far as to question the effort. These guys were out there playing hard. But I do question the preparation and belief that if they execute as designed, things will go their way. There’s just been way too many examples of that not being true to think otherwise.
It's easy to lose perspective after a game like this and forget that this team punched above its weight the first two weeks of the season and took a pair of good teams down to the final possession. This was a low point and as Kellen Moore put it, a learning opportunity. And that's just it, if this is a game you point to and make sure it never happens again, it's a blip on the radar and something you can live with as you build a program. If it's not, if this is the type of repeated effort you get on the road and this team routinely gets blown out in difficult environments? Well, then that's a massive issue.
All we have right now is that ugly feeling, and the only way to erase that is by playing better next week. The problem is that next week the Saints have the most difficult game on their schedule and open as 16.5-point underdogs. Yikes.
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Jack Stoll
I had to pick something, so congrats, Mr. Stoll, enjoy some praise. The Saints found themselves in the end zone just once in the game, and that came on a play that it seemed the entire stadium thought was a Rattler throwaway. Nope, the blocking TE went up and made a nifty grab at the edge of the end zone. It was his first in the NFL and at least kept the Saints point total something slightly above anemic.
I won’t sit here and tell you to be excited about Jack Stoll as a weapon, but him being at least some kind of threat in the passing game is a positive for this team.
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Health?
I hesitate to even write this considering the Saints have had a player end up on IR each of the last two weeks after a game in which they never even went into the injury tent, but it does seem the Saints avoided any significant injury issues in this game. It’s the lowest imaginable bar for a stock up item -- you escaped intact -- but I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. Justin Reid and Kool-Aid McKinstry were both evaluated for concussions but returned to the game. Reid just seems to have bad luck when it comes to taking unfortunate damage. In this case it looked like he took a cleat to the face. No concussion, but that couldn’t have felt good.
Lagniappe
I’ll give you the same assessment Kellen Moore did after the game: Spencer Rattler was fine, and on a day where so much felt like it couldn’t have gone worse, that’s on the positive side of the column. I’m still eternally frustrated by his lack of touch on short passes that come in like 99 mph fastballs from 10 feet away, but I also need the receivers to account for it. I also don’t see the interception as an issue at all, considering it came on 4th down and actually gave the Seahawks worse field position than if it fell incomplete. The QB wasn’t perfect, but there were a lot of reasons you lost this game and he was WELL down the list. … Tyler Shough played a set of downs with a host of backups in the game. It didn’t go particularly well, but at least it happened. The official debut is in the books. … Rashid Shaheed is a weapon with the ball in his hands. On his first opportunity to return a punt (which didn’t come until the 4th quarter) he brought it back 40 yards. If only the ball could be in his hands more often. … I’m having a hard time pinning down whether Kendre Miller is playing well or not. One the one hand he averaged 3.9 yards per carry (7 for 27), but I often feel like h’s running way too upright and isn’t getting north and south quickly enough. Either way he’s taking on a significant workload and that’s a positive.