Saints Season Officially Circling the Drain

The Saints had so much promise from their hot start, but five straight losses has this team in peril. While there's no quit in the players, they have to figure this thing out if they want to salvage their season.

With five games left in the season, things certainly seem grim for the New Orleans Saints. Mathematically, they are still in the hunt for the postseason at 5-7, but nothing we've seen from the five-game losing streak has given anyone hope or optimism for making a run to close out the regular season. The Saints offense is dead in the water, and it hit rock bottom against the Cowboys on Thursday night.

Taysom Hill provided a nice spark, but the finger injury he suffered changed things. It's not broken, but he's going to have to get it checked out. He was sporting a splint on his middle finger on the throwing hand. You're not going to win games when you lose the turnover battle, and Hill's four-interception game was hard to watch.

In the first half, New Orleans did just about everything they needed to be in the game on both sides of the ball. Of course, they missed a long field goal, and then had a costly red zone interception that could probably be have equal blame on Taysom Hill and Kenny Stills. However, being down 6 points at the half with the way things were going certainly provided a lot more hope as opposed to some of the other losses.

Unfortunately, the second half was just ugly. After getting within 3 points, the Saints gave up a huge 58-yard touchdown run to Tony Pollard. It's unclear as to what Marcus Williams was thinking while defending against it, but it's not right to solely place blame on him for the play. Despite big plays like that, defensively this was more than enough to get any Saints team from the past several years a win. 

If your eyes haven't been opened yet to some of the glaring needs going into the offseason, then you're obviously not watching. This is a team that will manage whatever salary cap concerns the media and social media general managers express to be competitive in free agency. They're going to have to hit in the draft. They're going to have to have better depth at several positions.

For now, the team is going to get some rest and have time to reflect on things over the next few days, and a normal week of work and preparation is to come starting Monday for the road game against the Jets. The players haven't given up, but it's absolutely unfamiliar territory for Sean Payton and many of the faces that have been around and riding the season successes from the past.

“We just have to regroup," Marshon Lattimore said after the game. 

"We have to come back on Monday and get back to work. We have to keep fighting. We are still in it. We can go 10-7. We just have to believe that and go out and do it.”

“It’s very frustrating. It’s unfamiliar territory for us," said Taysom Hill. 

"It’s my fifth year, and I haven’t experienced anything like this since I have been a Saint. I think, again, the thing that we have talked about internally is that there are no guarantees in this game, and I’d say that this group, the leadership, everyone continues to work and put their heads down to do everything you can do create opportunities to win football games. But there’s no guarantees. We’re going to continue to work and do everything we can to get back on a win streak, but yes this is disappointing.”

There are times where this feels like the Patriots from last year when they lost Tom Brady. Life without Drew Brees was always uncertain, but also promising before Jameis Winston went down. Too many injuries on both sides of the football are hard to overcome, and in the grand scheme of things, there's a lot of questions and uncertainty going into next season that we'll have to worry about soon.

Could things get worse for the Saints? We'll see. The reality is New Orleans is officially out of chances this season, and they seemingly won't go down without a fight.

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