Inconsistent Saints, Pelicans both finish the year with impressive wins

NEW ORLEANS – The New Orleans Saints and the New Orleans Pelicans both played on the last day of 2023.

Both had similar opportunities to enter 2024 on a positive note even though the Saints season is winding down and the Pelicans season is just getting rolling.

Both had been plagued by inconsistency, generally following periodic encouraging performances with occasional discouraging ones – and vice versa.

The final hours of the year presented a far more urgent situation for the Saints than for the Pelicans.

A loss to the Buccaneers in Tampa on Sunday afternoon would have made the final of the 2023 regular season and first game in 2024 – against the Atlanta Falcons next weekend in the Caesars Superdome – essentially irrelevant to the playoffs.

The 8-7 Buccaneers had won in four in a row and could win their third consecutive NFC South title by winning their fifth consecutive game. The 7-8 Saints would have to win on the road in order to still have a chance to play beyond the game against the Falcons.

From the beginning of the game New Orleans performed as one might expect a division champion to, and Tampa Bay performed like a team still searching for itself in the penultimate game of the regular season.

The Saints received the opening kickoff and drove to a touchdown on their opening possession for the first time since January 8. In the 2022 season finale the opening possession produced the Saints’ only points in a 10-7 loss to the Carolina Panthers that left Dennis Allen’s first team as head coach with a 7-10 record.

The uncharacteristically fast start by the offense was followed by one of the most complete performances of the season in a 23-13 victory.

Derek Carr was efficient, Juwan Johnson was consistently productive, the running game was solid even though Alvin Kamara didn’t play in the second half because of an ankle injury, the defense took the ball away four times (in addition to Paulson Adebo’s interception on a two-point conversion pass that prevented the home team from creeping within eight points in the final moments), Blake Grupe was three for three on field goals, and the special teams helped the visitors orchestrate a consistent field-position advantage.

The Saints defense was outstanding even though Baker Mayfield and the Bucs offense padded their stats in a futile attempt to catch up in the fourth quarter.

Alontae Taylor and Johnathan Abram intercepted Mayfield, Abram caused a fumble that Demario Davis recovered and Isaac Yiadom recovered another fumble.

Davis, Pete Werner and Zach Baun helped keep the Bucs off schedule and the defensive line played well as a unit against the run and the pass.

As complementary football goes, this was as good as New Orleans has done in a while.

What does it all mean?

Well, probably not much if the Buccaneers bounce back and defeat the Panthers – the worst team in the NFL – next week, which is all they have to do to win the division. If the Saints and Bucs both win, New Orleans still has a wild-card path to the post-season, but it would require hitting each leg of a tricky parlay.

So it remains to be seen whether the boost that the Saints experienced in the waning hours of 2023 will have much carry-over into 2024.

The Pelicans, meanwhile, also rang out the old year with one of their better performances of the season and they have plenty of time to build on it in the New Year.

Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram each scored 26 points to lead six players in double figures and the Pelicans practically led wire to wire in a 129-109 rout of the Los Angeles Lakers in the Smoothie King Center that ended some 5½ hours after the Saints game did.

The circumstances were advantageous for the Pelicans because L.A. was finishing a back-to-back after a 108-106 loss at Minnesota on Saturday. LeBron James, who turned 39 on Saturday, was sick for a second consecutive day but played for a second consecutive day.

Though the visitors weren’t as fresh as the Pelicans, who last played Thursday and have been home for more than a week, James played a game-high 37 minutes and Anthony Davis had 20 points and 10 rebounds in 35 minutes.

There were no load-management absences of note. The home team clearly was determined to give a better account of itself against the team that embarrassed it 133-89 in the in-season tournament semifinals 24 days earlier in Las Vegas.

It’s a long way to mid-April when the Pelicans (19-14 and tied with Dallas for the Southwest Division lead) will face a stretch run like the one the Saints are concluding.

It would be foolish to try and predict what 2024 might have in store for either of these inconsistent teams.

But both finished 2023 with impressive victories in important games against conference peers.

And that’s a good way to ring in the New Year.