A Fitting End

By Mike Rifkin

Thursday was a special day in New Orleans. At halftime they honored future Hall of Fame Quarterback Drew Brees and former head coach Sean Payton made his return with his new team the Denver Broncos. Brees and Payton were a dynamic duo that took the franchise to new heights, including the club’s only Super Bowl win in 2009. 

While it was fun honoring the past, the current Saints got torched by their former coach and lost 33-10 to the Broncos. The loss marks the fifth straight for the Saints and puts them at 2-5 on the season. The Saints got off to a strong start on the season beating both the Panthers and Cowboys and scoring over 40 points in both. But now with quarterback Derek Carr injured the Saints are struggling on both sides of the ball. The Saints defense has 13 takeaways and have 15 sacks on the season, but they’ve given up the most yards per game (394.9). 

As mentioned above Payton and Brees were a part of the best Saints run as a franchise. But after they left, the Saints thought they were still contenders and kept most of the same roster intact and promoted Dennis Allen, who was the Defensive Coordinator to Head Coach. Allen is currently 18-23 as the Saints head coach. The Brees and Payton duo made the Saints the cornerstone of relevance for a little over a decade, but what last night represented was now it’s time for the Saints to start things over.  Guys like Alvin Kamara and Cam Jordan, as great of Saints as they were, if the team doesn’t see themselves as winners, why are you keeping them around? Sell off some veterans and get draft picks, that should’ve been the idea after Brees and Payton left. But it wasn’t and now the team is just stuck in the middle and really doesn’t have a definitive direction. Last night was a fitting end to the current construction of the Saints, so let’s see how they respond near the trade deadline.