By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
Most of the postmortems are in for the New Orleans Saints and their sudden dismissal from the National Football League playoffs. It’s kind of long, but here’s mine.
The Saints, who entered the 2019 season as one of, if not the, favorite to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, are out, eliminated in the Wild-Card Round by the Minnesota Vikings 26-20 in overtime Sunday at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
As disappointments go, this one wasn’t as bad as the previous two, or as acute as many of the other seasons in the 2010s when New Orleans fell short of the Super Bowl, after winning it to complete the 2009 season.
To be perfectly honest, an astute observer could have seen this coming as early as September, right from the very first game of the season.
It didn’t seem that way at the time. My son and I were in that number, right on the front row for the opening game, a Monday Night Football contest at the Dome against the Houston Texans.
When Stephen and I left the stadium that night, we believed that fate at long last was smiling on the Saints.
New Orleans had emerged victorious 30-28 after Wil Lutz bombed a 58-yard field goal as time expired. But what we forgot was why the Saints needed a game-winning field goal in the first place.
That was because Deshaun Watson had just effortlessly thrown perfect throws to wide-open receivers in a lightning-quick two-play drive that covered 75 yards to give the Texans a 28-27 lead with 38 seconds to play.
But Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees fired two strikes of his own with no time outs left to get close enough for Lutz, who nailed the winning kick with plenty to spare.
The next week, of course, brought the thumb injury that sidelined Brees for five weeks, a sign that maybe the football gods weren’t finished toying with the Saints after all.
It is ironic that head coach Sean Payton did some of the best work of his career in the five weeks that Brees was out, coaxing five wins with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback.
Bridgewater, seeing his first significant action in more than three years after suffering a severe knee injury with Minnesota, wasn’t spectacular, but he was steady, he kept mistakes to a minimum. The defense and special teams stepped up their play, Payton made all the right calls and the Saints got through that stretch without their leader.
It is also ironic that when Brees returned, he played some of the best football of his life, finishing the regular season with a 74.5 percent completion rate, 2,979 passing yards and 27 touchdowns against just four interceptions.
I say it’s ironic because Payton and Brees were the ones who made the most critical mistakes against the Vikings on Sunday.
Payton’s mistakes actually started midway through the regular season. After going into their bye week 7-1, the Saints came out flat after a week off and lost at home to the Atlanta Falcons, who were 1-7 at the time.
Brees did not play well that day, and he was sacked six times by a Falcons’ pass rush that gave Minnesota a blueprint on how to stop the Saints, who did not score a touchdown.
Offensively, the Falcons were able to move the ball, especially on deep passes over the middle. Only a solid effort in the red zone kept the score semi-respectable, 26-9, but the loss was a foreshadowing of disappointment to come.
From where I sit, Payton’s most grievous and costly decision came early in the Dec. 8 game at home against San Francisco.
The Saints started on fire against the 49ers in a showdown between the NFC’s two best teams. They rolled to an easy touchdown drive on the opening possession of the game, got a three-and-out, then scored again almost effortlessly on the following drive.
Inexplicably, Payton decided to go for a two-point conversion after the second score. The Saints failed on the attempt, and San Francisco used the momentum to get their game started.
The game became a shootout, because the Saints’ secondary turned Jimmy Garoppolo into the second coming of Joe Montana, leaving 49er receivers wide-open all afternoon, and that missed PAT followed the Saints all afternoon.
So, when Brees – who played brilliantly – marched the Saints down the field for a go-ahead touchdown in the final minute, they were compelled to go for two again in order to make the score 48-45, so that a San Francisco field goal would only tie the game, not win it.
Again, the 49ers held, the score remained 46-45 and the Saints’ secondary allowed George Kittle to run free on a fourth-down pass play that set Robbie Gould up for a game-winning field goal.
That 48-46 defeat gave the 49ers – who had already beaten Green Bay – the tiebreaker advantage in the NFC. And when San Francisco, the Packers and the Saints all finished 13-3, it was New Orleans who was the odd man out.
That meant the Saints were the No. 3 seed in the NFC and were forced to not just play the Wild-Card Round, but play against the Vikings, a team that always seems to have New Orleans’ number.
A week off would have given the Saints time to get some banged-up players healthy and then they would have been playing at home throughout the playoffs as the No. 1 seed, which they’d have been had they beaten San Francisco.
When it came down to it, though, the Saints still should have won Sunday, and a lot of Saints fans just assumed that they would.
Social media chatter in the week before the game was geared more toward how the Saints might fare outdoors at Lambeau Field against the Packers in the Divisional Round, and, yes, I was guilty of some of that too.
But Sunday morning I woke up with a bad feeling about the Saints, and as it unfolded, my fears were realized.
The Saints got a break on the first possession of the game, when Adam Theilen lost a fumble that was recovered by Vonn Bell at the Vikings’ 37-yard line. But the Saints had to settle for a field goal instead of getting a touchdown.
And Brees did not play well in the first half, throwing for just 63 yards and an interception. It was the fourth consecutive playoff game where Brees had a long stretch of mediocre play.
The Saints had one touchdown drive in the first half, going 70 yards on four plays in the second quarter, but most of the yardage came on a 50-yard pass from Taysom Hill to Deonte Harris that set up Alvin Kamara’s 4-yard touchdown run.
That, by the way, was about the extent of Kamara’s contribution against Minnesota. Otherwise, he was a non-factor, finishing with 21 rushing yards on seven carries and 34 receiving yards on eight catches.
Defensively, the Saints were OK, but they proved more vulnerable on the ground than in any game all season, allowing Dalvin Cook to run for 84 yards and a touchdown in the first half.
Finally, that first half ended with Lutz missing a 43-yard field goal attempt, snapping a streak of 18 straight successful kicks. Instead of a 13-13 tie, the Vikings went into the locker room leading 13-10. I texted my brother at halftime that, “I did not like what I saw in the first half.”
The Saints were better in the second half, but three key plays stood out as game-killers.
Getting the ball to start the second half, the Saints got a quick first down, converting a third down, then faced a third-and-1 – actually less than a yard – at the Minnesota 42.
The Saints’ running game has been built around Kamara or Latavius Murray running straight ahead, attacking the defense behind one of the league’s best offensive lines.
But on this play, Payton chose to run Kamara on a jet sweep around left end. The Vikings sniffed it out, dropped Kamara for a 4-yard loss, and the Saints were forced to punt.
Later, in the fourth quarter, the Saints got the ball in good field position trailing 20-17. After a brilliant 28-yard run by Hill to the Minnesota 20, Brees lost the handle on the football and the Vikings recovered.
The Saints stiffened on defense and got Brees the ball back one more time with 1:55 to play. Now, here is where I believe Payton lost the game for New Orleans.
Starting at their own 30, Brees drove the Saints down the field to a first down at the Vikings 26 with 21 seconds to play and one time out remaining. Even before the play was whistled dead, I was yelling at the TV for Payton to call the time out.
Instead, the Saints tried to rush up to the line to clock the ball, and Kamara, lined up in the slot on the right side, moved early, resulting in a false-start penalty.
Under NFL rules, when the game is under two minutes to play in each half, in addition to the 5 yards, a false start results in a 10-second runoff of the clock UNLESS the offending team calls a time out.
So why on earth did Payton not save the 10 seconds, use the time out to regroup, call two good plays and take at least a couple of cracks at the end zone for a game-winning touchdown?
But he didn’t, and with only 11 seconds left, Brees tried one half-hearted attempt at a pass play that had no chance, then Lutz came out for the tying field goal.
Minnesota won the coin toss to start overtime, drove 75 yards, scored a touchdown on a 4-yard pass from Kirk Cousins to Kyle Rudolph and that was that.
One can debate the NFL’s overtime rules all day, but they’re designed as much to reward defense as they are offense. And the Saints didn’t get the stop, as the secondary – you see a pattern here? – gave up a 43-yard pass to Theilen that put the Vikings inside the Saints 5.
A lot of people, Saints fans mostly, but also some of the NBC studio crew preparing for the next game, thought Rudolph pushed off on P.J. Williams, committing offensive pass interference to get open in the end zone.
But it wasn’t called, and, frankly, I agree with the non-call. Sure, there was contact on both sides, and, maybe – maybe – if you slowed the video down to a crawl, you could see a little shove on the part of Rudolph, but it wasn’t enough to merit a call, especially on a review.
In a way, it was football justice, because the Saints didn’t play well enough to beat the Vikings Sunday. Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer outcoached Payton at virtually every turn and Cousins outplayed Brees every time it mattered most.
Now the Saints head into an offseason that feels like the end of an era. The Saints have some hard decisions to make about some key personnel, most critically at quarterback.
Brees will turn 41 a week from Wednesday, and while at times this season he played brilliantly, he’s come up small in the playoffs now three years running. He’s a free agent again, and so too is Bridgewater.
Do the Saints gamble on one more run with Brees and risk letting Bridgewater walk? Or do they put their faith in Bridgewater’s reconstructed knee and let Brees go, after all he’s done for this franchise? There is no easy answer to that dilemma.
The Saints also need to give Michael Thomas some help at the wide receiver position. Thomas set an NFL record with 149 catches in the regular season, but that reflects the fact that their options were limited at the wideout spots.
Kamara, a running back, was second-best on the team with 81 catches, and tight end Jared Cook was third with 43. Among the wide receivers, Ted Ginn Jr. and Tre’Quan Smith combined for just 48 catches, and that was it.
Finally, they need another overhaul in the secondary. The vulnerability to the deep pass was what ultimately killed the Saints’ season, and only a world-class pass rush that featured 51 sacks kept their pass defense respectable.
This is not the way Saints fans expected to be spending their January, looking ahead to an uncertain future while other teams play on.
Payton and Brees have had some great seasons in New Orleans over the years, but that sound you heard Sunday may have been the door closing on their chances at another Super Bowl.
Stan Caldwell is a 35-year veteran sports writer in the Hattiesburg area, and most recently served as sports information director at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi.
