The Good: Resilience
The Saints nearly matched the largest comeback in team history after falling behind 21-0 in the 3rd quarter. Instead of folding after a terrible half of football. the offense responded in crunch time. The Saints clawed their way back to force overtime and were a two point conversion away from stealing a win on the road against a team with Super Bowl aspirations. They easily could have gone the way of the Cleveland Browns on Sunday and stayed on the mat and lost by 20, but they didn’t. Chris Olave
fought through pain to put up a career high 182 yards and Devaughn Vele looked like the solid WR2 we hoped he would be when the team acquired him last year. Tyler Shough responded after the half to finish with 410 yards and 3 TDs. The Saints ultimately came up short, but if the first half was just shaking off some rust that they weren’t able to shake off in the preseason due to the starters not playing then we should expect more of what we saw in the second half in Detroit.
The Bad: Officiating
Simply put, the officials stole 7 points from the Saints in this game. Don’t let anyone tell you different but Jared Goff fumbled the football and Jonas Sanker took it back for a touchdown, but the refs once again stole a game from the Saints. Why this keeps happening to them I do not know, but the NFL has had an officiating problem for many years that isn’t just exclusive to the Saints and it seems they have no interest in fixing. The incompetence of the officials is costing teams games and people their jobs, and the NFL has no accountability or oversight for their own officials who are supposed to be impartially judging these games with incredibly high stakes. This isn’t a problem that only the Saints suffer from, as I am sure they have been the beneficiaries of a bad call here and there in the past, but the fact is with how advanced the replay system is now, there shouldn’t be this many obviously bad calls anymore. The Saints would have won this game if it was officiated correctly, but there is no use dwelling on it as there is nothing they can do about it but expect more of the same going forward and work to make it not matter.
The Ugly: The first half (and the first three minutes of the 3rd quarter)
The Saints looked absolutely awful to start the game. Their first eight drives ended in five punts and three turnovers which resulted in them falling in a 21-0 hole. Despite the valiant comeback attempt, it is hard to win games in the NFL after falling behind by 21 points in the second half. If they had been able to manage just a field goal in the first half they would have won, but they couldn’t do that. Let’s hope this was just a fluke and that what we saw on their last five drives of the game is what we will see going forward.
