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jeanpierre

BY NICK UNDERHILL | NUNDERHILL@THEADVOCATE.COM SEP 16, 2018 - 5:38 PM

We should probably start by saying the Saints didn’t lose.

Yes, they won, but it feels weird to tell the story with that sentence. That phrase implies action, and it doesn’t feel like there was action taken. It feels more accurate to say the Saints survived and benefitted from a flurry of mistakes by Cleveland, which on Sunday employed a kicker who missed two field goals and two extra points in a 21-18 game. You usually don’t get that lucky.

But it wasn’t a loss. That is what matters today. The Saints are 1-1 and have another opportunity next week to figure things out without having to feel as if their backs are against the wall. And make no mistake: The world would be coming down on this team if this was the one that popped open Cleveland's beer coolers.

At the same time, the bigger picture shows more significant concerns. This team is supposed to be a Super Bowl contender. It doesn’t look like one. Not right now. That’s why the tone in the locker room was like one after a defeat. Everyone was happy with the result, but no one was pleased with how it came together.

“We are shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s a faceless opponent,” running back Alvin Kamara said. “We don’t care who we play. We are playing against the Saints. We know how to prepare. We put on film what we can do. When we do things like fumble the ball, then it puts a damper on what we are trying to do.”

Last week, the offense looked like an unstoppable force. This week, it seemed confused and out of sync. The defense looked good for most of the first three quarters, but then it collapsed in the end and allowed the Browns to go down the field for a touchdown and set up what could have been the tying field goal.

What made the optics worse was what the Saints did to themselves. This game would have felt a little different if New Orleans had scored 14 points on its first two drives instead of three. The Saints have won most of their games during the previous 13 seasons on Drew Brees’ shoulders, but the quarterback cost the team two touchdowns on Sunday.

On the team’s first drive, Ted Ginn Jr. got behind the coverage and appeared destined to score, but Brees’ pass was underthrown and knocked out of bounds. Michael Thomas fumbled on the next play while stretching for a first down, which left New Orleans without any points.

The team then settled for a field goal on its second drive when it blew not one, but two opportunities to score. The first one occurred when Brees simply missed a wide-open Ben Watson in the end zone. It happened again when a Tre’Quan Smith holding penalty nullified a Kamara touchdown.

Add that to another fumble by Ginn and the team going 3 for 12 on third down, and the offensive performance looked pretty bad.

“At least in the first half, I could point to three, four, five, six different plays where we missed a pass on an open guy on a touchdown, or we missed an assignment that would otherwise have continued a drive or gotten us points,” Brees said. “The turnovers, it was really sloppy football. It was not sharp.”

New Orleans wasn’t surprised by a lot of the things the Browns were doing. The Saints run a defense similar to the one Cleveland defensive coordinator Gregg Williams uses, and they played him last season when he was working with the Los Angeles Rams. But the Browns still did a lot of things that caused issues for the Saints, and some of those things weren’t on film against other opponents — but that seems to happen most weeks.

“(We get) a lot more movement than you’ll see from going against other teams, more D-line movement, more safety down,” offensive tackle Terron Armstead said. “It’s a ton of different change-ups guys (do), but we’re doing things to approach that next team too. It’s a respect thing.”

It’s hard to know what tone to strike after a game like this. We could easily write about how good the defense looked for 57 minutes. Or we could just easily talk about how the Browns scored on a 47-yard touchdown to tie the game at 18-18 and then came back and got in position to tie it again on the next drive.

There were steps forward from last week’s game against Tampa Bay, which suddenly looks like a better team than it did a week ago after beating the Eagles this week. But some things remained the same. The goal has to be to wash away more of the bad before next week’s game against the Atlanta Falcons.

Right now, it looks like there is still a lot of work to be done, and there are no easy fixes. The team needs to be better.

“It’s not an angel or sprinkle dust or anything like that,” coach Sean Payton said. “I think you find it during the week through the details. Honestly, I’m being serious. You find it in the details in what you do. Generally, in our game, the wins happen Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Preparation and attention to detail.”

That is where action can be taken.

It's not that my way is the right way, I just make the right way my way...

jeanpierre

Clever headline...

saintfan

And just like LSU is going to get beaten badly by the likes of Alabama (much as I hate it), the Saints, without some marked improvement in a great big hurry are going to get beaten right out of this season.

The talent is there. These guys better wake up and stop reading about how wonderful there are (or were last season). We need some push up front. We need some coverage in the secondary. We need the linebackers to do nothing more than stop getting pushed around. We need somebody other than Mike to get open. We need MI back.

Anybody preaching 18-1 nonsense is selling snake oil.

C'mon Man...

jeanpierre

Ken Crawley has shown some serious regression in the first two weeks of this season...

The returns on the DeMario Davis investment wreak BUST - he had many missed opportunities for TFLs and lost edge containment several times...

You spend two first round picks on someone, they should be coming in and knocking it out the park right away - Davenport is a fine player, but a busted pick...

darksoul35

I think its early to call him a bust but I do agree with you that two first round picks is a lot to give up to not have production now.

dizzle88

3 for 12 on third down.....

We had the same issue in a lot of games last season.

Supertek

We live or die by the play of Brees. And it shouldn't be that way. Last week he played well and the defense sucked this week he sucked. When will both the offense and defense show up. We better hope soon.

Rsanders24

The coaching staff has to figure out the best way to use the players we have. Seem like they are always tinkering with things. Davis should be playing in his natural position. Allen said that weak side is a lot like middle in our defense. The only way we can truly determine if he isn’t what we expected is to let him play his natural position. From what I gather he is still making adjustments but part of that is most likely due to the fact that all of the training camp, the LBs were playing several different positions.

When seeing Davenport on the field, I like what I see. I think he will really find his niche soon on this defense. I think that if he didn’t have the setbacks during the off-season and training camp we would have seen him more.

I’m more disappointed in Coleman than Crawley right now. Coleman is a disappointment and I felt it was a mistake to think that he would be better in our defense than KV was. From preseason through the first two weeks he has been MIA and a step slow reading and reacting. And Bell always looks confused.

I wish they would stop with all this damn experimenting with players and just put them where they have the best opportunity to succeed. They should have spent the training camp honing in on that one position.

SaintFanInATLHELL

I lay that blame on the team, not the player. Davenport did his job for the draft and put himself in a position to be picked in the middle of the 1st round. The capital the Saints spent to move up to get him in the spot he would have been picked in anyway is on them, not Davenport.

All in all the costs really can't be computed until after the 4th year of a 1st round rookie contract. If you're looking to extend the guy, the picks probably were worth it. If not (i.e. Cooks) then it's a bad look.

SFIAH

Super Bowl Championships: New Orleans Saints:1, Carolina:0, Atlanta Chokers: STILL ZERO

Only Atlanta choked in an unchokable situation... Life is definitely good.