Saints got the prescription for improvement backward

The New Orleans Saints used their bye last week to evaluate how they could improve on their 5-5 start to the season as they entered the stretch run.

Head coach Dennis Allen had a simple approach to finding improvement for a team whose defense played well enough alongside a struggling offense to produce a 3-2 start before the improving offense and the sliding defense produced a 2-3 stretch heading into the bye.

“We’ve got to find a way to get the first five weeks defense to show up and the last five weeks offense to show up, and see if those two units can play together as a team,” Allen said. “I think if we can do that then we’ll see a lot better results.”

Apparently the Saints misunderstood Allen because it looked like the first five weeks’ offense and the last five weeks’ defense teamed up to produce a 24-15 loss to the Falcons on Sunday in Atlanta.

Bye weeks present an opportunity to take a step back and identify areas of weakness and work to strengthen them.

It was pretty easy to figure out that the Saints offense had to get more productive in the red zone and the defense had to starting slowing down opponents’ rushing attacks, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks running by design and by ad-libbing.

If anything the Saints regressed in both areas.

New Orleans entered the game ranked 23rd in the NFL in percentage of trips into the red zone that produced touchdowns (48.57). On Sunday that percentage was zero, zilch, nada on five trips inside the red zone.

And the red-zone futility was more disastrous than those stats indicate. That’s because Derek Carr threw an interception that Jessie Bates returned 92 yards for a first-quarter touchdown.

The Saints were poised to take least a 6-0 lead and perhaps even a 10-0 lead. Instead they trailed 7-3 and played from behind the rest of the day.

The closest the Saints came to regaining the lead came at the end of the third quarter when they re-entered the red zone while trailing 14-12. But Taysom Hill lost a fumble at the five and New Orleans didn’t even get a chance to send in Blake Grupe, who made five of six field-goal attempts to account for all of the team’s points.

Still, the Saints entered the fourth quarter trailing by just two points, but the lead would grow to nine before they got the ball back and they would never again possess the ball in a one-score game.

That was mostly due to an inability by the defense to slow down the Atlanta rushing attack. The Falcons finished with 228 rushing yards while averaging 5.6 yards per attempt.

Eventually it was outstanding rookie Bijon Robinson (16 rushes, 91 yards, one touchdown) and productive veterans Tyler Allgeier (10-64) and Cordarrelle Patterson (8-43) who did most of the damage.

But early on it was second-year quarterback Desmond Ridder (seven rushes, 30 yards), returning from a two-game benching, who was his team’s most productive ball carrier, following in the footsteps of the Vikings’ Josh Dobbs (44 yards), the Bears’ Tyson Bagent (70 yards), the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence (59 yards), the Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield (31 yards), the Packers’ Jordan Love (39 yards) and the Panthers’ Bryce Young (34 yards) as effective runners against New Orleans.

So the Saints will head home and get back to work trying to get better on offense in the red zone and on defense containing rushers, especially quarterbacks.

Their next three games will be played in the Caesars Superdome, beginning next Sunday against the Detroit Lions, at 8-3 the only team left on the schedule that currently has a winning record.

To this point the Saints have played three teams with winning records – the Jaguars, the Colts and the Texans. Their first 11 opponents entered Sunday with a combined record of 46 wins and 67 losses.

The remaining six opponents entered Sunday with a combined record of 24-38.

The Saints are tied for first in the NFC South – easily the weakest division in the NFL – but their two competitors – the now first-place Falcons (5-6) and the third-place Buccaneers (4-7) – are 1-0 against New Orleans with one more to play.

The rematch with the Buccaneers comes on New Year’s Eve in Tampa and the rematch against the Falcons comes the following weekend in the Superdome.

Perhaps somewhere along the way the offense will figure out how to reach the end zone from the red zone and defense will figure out how to slow down quarterbacks that run the ball.

But regardless, the Saints are unlikely to be able to remove themselves from playoff contention before 2024 arrives.