The honeymoon is over. So is the grace period that comes with Year 1 of a rebuild. Kellen Moore needs to wake up and coach. After getting blown out by a rival coach with even less time on the job than himself, the New Orleans Saints must make adjustments. Monday night's blowout loss to the Atlanta Falcons and newly-hired head coach Kevin Stefanski was a generational defeat in these teams' 60-year rivalry. The Saints haven't lost to Atlanta by 20 points since 1999. You have to go back to the 1982 season to find a margin of defeat this wide.
By this point, it's obvious where Moore's weaknesses lie. He hasn't prepared his team for an opponent in 21 consecutive games, ranking among the NFL's worst first-quarter offenses. He isn't adjusting his plans
to his personnel. There's no world where backup left tackle Asim Richards should be left on an island as often as Kelvin Banks Jr. was trusted to, but Moore hasn't made an effort to give the reserve more help. That's just one example, but it's now cost the Saints two games. Tyler Shough was under pressure on 47.1% of his dropbacks Monday night after facing a pressure rate of 35.6% last week. The nonsensical run game falls on him, too. Whether there's too many cooks in the kitchen or just a failure to scheme designs to talent, the Saints don't have anything to hang their hat on in that phase.
Don't expect a bunch of firings and shuffling on the coaching staff. We saw just how patient this organization is (to a fault) during Dennis Allen's run as head coach. But an offensive line with so many premium draft picks and lucrative contracts invested in it shouldn't be so ineffective. It gets back to fundamental failures of knowing which gap and man to block and which designs favor the players available. The good news is that this is a long season. The Saints have time to recover from this.
But there may be more time left on the clock than they deserve. Moore can't produce results like this when Todd Monken has a Cleveland Browns team everyone wrote off at 3-1, and Jacksonville Jaguars coach Liam Coen has almost as many wins (16) as Moore has losses (14) in the same span of time. The New York Giants are 3-1 with a new coaching staff and without their first-round pick at quarterback. Moore already faced scrutiny going into this game. That volume needs to increase after he fell flat on his face. Other coaches have produced results. Why hasn't he?
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Saints' blowout loss to Falcons should be wakeup call for Kellen Moore
