Saints Season Implodes After Missed Opportunities

The Saints losses have been all-too-familiar this year, and the Monday night collapse against the Bucs ended up costing them the season.

TAMPA -- Maybe it's good to see the Band-Aid finally get ripped off the Saints season. Maybe this was inevitable even if New Orleans did manage to win against Tampa, but we'll never know and can now stop wondering 'what if'. 

After 13 games, this team is practically out of the playoff picture. Sure, there's some crazy mathematical situations that could possibly keep them alive, but the team simply hit rock bottom on Monday night against the Bucs. The wheels are off. They've hit the wall. Whatever analogy you want to use for this season is valid. They've secured their first losing season since 2016, as they can finish no better than 8-9 on the year.

We've seen this story before against the Bengals where the team implodes in the last few minutes. New Orleans has found ways to lose games in just about every way this season. The Saints had a comfortable 16-3 in a game where they dominated over 50 minutes of the game only to see it thrown away in the final few minutes.

"Look, again, standing up here and disappointed that we lost a game that we had a chance to win," Dennis Allen said following the loss. 

"We gave ourselves every opportunity and we didn’t get it done. We had a couple opportunities to make some plays, we didn’t make ‘em. We didn’t convert on third and short. Frustrating."

Two big plays changed the course of the game, with the first being Mark Ingram running out of bounds just shy of the first down marker to set up an eventual 3rd-and-1 that saw Marquez Callaway's number called. The team then punted to Tampa only to see them march 91 yards to make it 16-10.

Allen said, "We had a pass play that was really kind of initially designed to put the fullback in the flat on the other side. You know, Andy (Dalton) thought he had a shot at the bullet with the X. Look, hindsight is 20/20, I wish we would’ve run it. You know, Mark hurt his knee on the previous play, so he came up a yard short, which…that’s frustrating."

Callaway had just 13 snaps in the game, and for that to be the option on 3rd-and-1 is quite the eyebrow raiser. Again, you can jump on someone like Ingram, but he got hurt on the play in which he ran out of bounds. He also took full accountability for the play.

Andy Dalton said following the game, "It was one-on-one over there, and I tried to give him a chance, and unfortunately we weren't able to make that one."

Even after Tampa responded, the Saints had a chance, but a costly 12 men in the huddle penalty backed them up into a horrible situation that led to them punting back to the Bucs for the eventual game-winning drive. The huge miscue is something Dalton said is on him.

"We got to get one guy off the field. At the end of the day, that's my responsibility. So, I've got to get it done. It's unfortunate because we had Trevor (Penning) in there as a jumbo, and we weren't able to get the right substitution done."

There's no processing this game, and Cam Jordan was as poignant about it as possible in the locker room. It's simply unfamiliar territory for the veteran pass rusher.

He said, "You don’t. This…it hurts, you don’t process anything. I gotta go into a bye week knowing that we should’ve beat this team the first time, we should’ve beat this team this time, we should’ve beat Carolina, we should’ve beat a lot of other teams. We didn’t. Right now, these are the facts, this is what we’re facing. It’s beyond an uphill battle. We’ve gotta swing our way out of these last four games."

These last four games include a long bye week in which there will be a lot of reflection to be had by all. New Orleans has a lot to assess over these final games, and the obvious future outlook is cloudy for a team that is without a first-round pick going into next year's draft. They're also going to have their hands full with player decisions, the salary cap as usual, and if they'll make any coaching changes at the end of it all.

It's mind-boggling to see such a talented team and promising season go to waste. At the end of the day, it was just Fool's Gold. At the end of the day, these are the types of losses that have to have accountability. These games get coaches fired and players benched. We'll see if that's the case for the Saints, as the epitaph of their season can simply be summarized as Missed Opportunities. 

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