Saints preparation brings back their swagger in dominant win

NEW ORLEANS – The swagger was back.

After the New Orleans Saints’ 42-34 loss at Arizona 10 days earlier, Alvin Kamara told his teammates that everyone had to get their swagger back.

That, Demario Davis explained a few days later, didn’t just refer to the performance on game-day, but also the performance on each workday.

So one of the most underachieving teams in the NFL went back to work with a renewed clarity of purpose.

And when game-day arrived Sunday, the Saints out-played their opponent in all three phases for the first time this season and thumped the Las Vegas Raiders 24-0 in the Caesars Superdome.

Kamara’s words set the tone for the work week and his actions set the tone for game-day.

He ran three yards for his first touchdown of the season, giving the Saints a 7-0 lead at the end of the first quarter.

Later he caught a 16-yard touchdown pass from Andy Dalton for a 17-0 halftime lead. The NFL said that Kamara became the first player in NFL history to have 10 games with at least one rushing touchdown and at least one touchdown reception in his first six season.

Kamara added a 36-yard touchdown catch from Dalton on the first possession of the third quarter to put the home team in command.

Though Kamara was the verbal and physical catalyst (62 yards on 18 rushes and 96 yards on nine receptions) for Sunday’s performance he had a lot of help.

The Saints offensive and defensive lines dominated, creating a physicality that the Raiders were unable to match.

The running game was methodical, accumulating 136 yards and 4.3 yards per carry, and Dalton wasn’t sacked and rarely bothered.

Derek Carr, on the other hand, was bothered a whole lot. It was partly because he was sacked three times and harassed frequently before being replaced to protect his health on the last possession and partly because Josh Jacobs, who was second in the NFL with an average of 105.5 rushing yards per game averaged a robust 5.7 yards per carry, finished with 43 yards on 10 carries.

The Saints had been their own worst enemy for much of the season, but not on Sunday. They had just five penalties for 27 yards and did not turn the ball over.

Tyrann Mathieu made an interception – his second and the defense’s second of the season – and the special teams generated the equivalent of another turnover by alertly stopping a fake punt, setting up a Wil Lutz field goal.

It’s difficult for football teams to out-perform their opponent in all the key areas, but that’s what the Saints did against the (2-5) Raiders.

If you contain the run, pressure the passer, take the ball away more than you give it away, remain balanced on offense and win the special teams competition, you will win the game.

The Saints knew that. They had been working for weeks to put together that kind of performance, but they kept falling short – way short.

Head coach Dennis Allen, who said publicly that playing his former employer wasn’t a big deal then admitted in the privacy of the post-game locker room that he lied, watched his team perform the way it generally played under his predecessor – Sean Payton.

His current team made its opponent look a lot like its namesakes whose 8-28 record under Allen triggered his firing eight years ago.

Allen summed up his team’s attitude between the poor performance in Arizona and the sparkling one Sunday: “Enough’s enough. It’s time to get this done.”

They got the job done in exceptional fashion.

But they’re still just 3-5, though they control their fate in a division that features no teams with a winning record.

They have a strong challenge coming into the Superdome next Monday night in the AFC North-leading Baltimore Ravens (5-3).

Was Sunday’s performance a turning point?

Was it an aberration?

Or something in between?

Only the Saints’ future performances can provide answers.

But as they try to replicate this latest performance it would behoove them to focus less on what they did Sunday and more on what they did in the days preceding Sunday.