Saints’ margin for error is so thin that every game carries high stakes
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve written that the New Orleans Saints defense is strong enough to win games by itself this season. So what happens when they have a bad day?
It turns out that they fall short to the lowly Atlanta Falcons. They’re one bad snap from Bradley Roby in coverage away from disaster, rallying back from an 18-point deficit only to see Cordarrelle Patterson go streaking down the sideline and set up a game-winning field goal try.
Their margin for error is so, so thin. They can’t trust their offense to score 27 or 30 points a game. In Sunday’s loss to the Falcons, the Saints went 3-of-10 on third downs and failed to convert their only fourth down attempt (though Taysom Hill was able to bark the defense offsides on another one).
Every play matters. Every missed scoring opportunity, every penalty that bumps the offense back 5 or 10 yards, and every dropped pass on a critical down. If everything goes as planned and Sean Payton’s offense perfectly executes every blocking assignment and runs each route on time, things go well. But it’s such a complicated balancing act that it only takes one mistake at the wrong time to sink the whole ship.
And that comes back to the defense, where the Saints must be elite in every phase in order to skate by. They can’t give up a big play because the offense lacks enough firepower to score a big play of their own. They can’t give ground in the run game because the offense isn’t built to play from behind and throw 40 or 50 times in an afternoon. There’s no room for error or a chance at redemption.
It’s really, really tough to win a lot of football games when that’s your formula. But when your team doesn’t have one single, elite quality to hang their hats on — whether it’s a far-reaching passing game, a dominant rushing attack, a consistent and productive pass rush, whatever — every single unit has to be on top of their game and play mistake-free football.
This late in the season, it’s unlikely the Saints will find a way to reinforce the house of cards they’ve built. They can only push on and keep their fingers crossed in hope that it doesn’t collapse.
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