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Times are tough right now for the New Orleans Saints.
AFter their 23-13 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, they have lost three straight games and plummeted to the bottom of the NFC South Division standings.
At 1-4, they are one of the biggest disappointments in the NFL.
You don’t need me to tell you this.
If you’ve watched the Saints the last three weeks, you know it. You’ve lived it.
The Saints are bad in just about every way right now. They’re so bad, even Mr. Glass-Half-Full himself, Drew Brees, is being critical of them.
It’s not one thing. It’s everything.
Coaching.
Game-planning and game management.
On-field execution, discipline and attention to detail.
Personnel evaluation, development and procurement.
It hasn’t reached bag-head-level bad, but after watching the Saints commit four penalties in five snaps during one mind-numbing stretch on Sunday, it’s certainly in the area code.
How bad is it?
Let us count the ways and try to put this tailspin into context:
1.) On Sunday, opposing fans took over the lower bowl of the Superdome for the second consecutive week in the fourth quarter. Last week, it was Falcons fans chanting “A-T-L.” This week, Vikings fans celebrated with a round of hearty “SKOL” chants that echoed throughout the mostly empty stadium.
Gifting road wins to opponents is not what local tourism officials have in mind when they promote New Orleans’ world-class hospitality.
“It’s extremely disappointing,” quarterback Tyler Shough said. “We feel the city coming out (and) supporting (the team). … When we’re in the Dome, we’ve got to play better.”
2.) The loss was the Saints’ third straight at home. They’ve now lost eight of 11 home games under head coach Kellen Moore and are a woeful 6-14 there the last three seasons. That’s the worst stretch since the Aint’s bag-head days of the early 1980s. The only other time they’ve been this bad at home in team history was the initial years of the Superdome in the mid-1970s.
“You only get so many games at home in front of this crowd, who consistently shows up,” center Erik McCoy said. “We’ve done nothing but crap the bed with those opportunities.”
Maybe it’s a good time for the Saints to embark on an extended road trip to New York and France. Who knows? Maybe this team will find itself somewhere along the Hudson or Seine. It certainly — and inexplicably — feels lost at home right now.
3.) The Saints’ 142 yards of total offense marked their most anemic performance in five years, dating to a paltry 127-yard effort against the Carolina Panthers in 2021. It was the club’s third lowest offensive output in a game in the last three decades.
Likewise, their nine first downs were the fifth fewest in the last three decades and their fewest in a home game since 1997, Mike Ditka’s first season. I know the club wants to honor Iron Mike, but that’s not the way to do it.
“We had a plan, we just weren’t able to execute it,” Moore said. “We just weren’t able to sustain drives. They played better than us. They coached better than us.”
4.) And finally, the Saints’ running woes continued. The Vikings outgained the Saints on the ground 155-53. The Saints’ “long” run covered 9 yards. It marked the 15th time in 22 games that the Saints have lost the rushing battle in a game under Moore.
The Saints now rank 29th in the league in rushing (81.8 yards a game) and 29th in average yards per carry (3.5).
More troubling, they haven’t had a 100-yarder rusher in a game yet under Moore. They went the entire 2025 season without one, making it the first time the Saints have gone without a 100-yard rusher in a season since 1992. Their current streak of 27 games without a 100-yarder rusher, which dates to Week 13 of the 2024 season when Alvin Kamara had 124 rushing yards against the Los Angeles Rams, is the club’s longest streak since the early 1970s.
“Our process and our operation has to continue to improve for us to be where we want to go,” guard David Edwards said. “And that starts with us up front and that starts with the players executing and being ready to go. We’ve got work to do.”
I think we can all agree with Edwards on that one. However, hard work alone is not the solution.
Former Saints special teams coordinator Al Everest used to have a saying about teams that give great effort but lack the instincts, discipline, technique and/or football IQ to be successful: “A jackass works hard all day, too,” he said. “But at the end of the day, he’s still a jackass.”