Every New Orleans Saints fan has every right to be pissed off after Monday night’s embarrassment against the Atlanta Falcons.
The lack of preparation was inexcusable. The slow starts have become infuriatingly predictable. And perhaps most frustrating of all, we’re watching the same problems that plagued this team throughout last season continue into this one.
Atlanta needed just three plays to score a touchdown. And the saddest part? I suspect every Saints fan watching was thinking the same thing: Well, here comes our three plays and a punt. The defense better be ready to get back out there.
Sure enough. Three plays. Minus eight yards. Fifty-eight seconds. And somehow, we even managed to punt twice.
But my biggest concern isn’t what happened Monday night. It’s what happens if Gayle Benson and Mickey Loomis refuse to acknowledge what’s happening right in front of them.
Because the New Orleans Saints are sitting on a gold mine.
His name is Tyler Shough.
I know this will be disputed, but I genuinely believe Shough is already one of the five best quarterbacks in the NFL. Give this kid the kind of protection Brock Purdy enjoys in San Francisco, and I believe we’re talking about an annual MVP candidate.
That’s how highly I think of him.
Watch what happens when protection breaks down. Shough escapes the pocket, navigates the pass rush, extends plays, and somehow finds Chris Olave, Devaughn Vele, or Juwan Johnson downfield.
It’s spectacular football.
But how much of it is actually the offense working as designed?
Because an awful lot of what we’re watching feels like backyard football. Shough improvising, making something out of nothing, and dragging an offense forward through sheer talent.
I’m not suggesting Moore can’t draw up a good play. Olave’s touchdown against Baltimore on the scissors concept was a beautifully designed play that worked exactly as intended. But those moments feel like the exception rather than the rule. Too often, the offense seems to depend on Shough escaping pressure and making something happen that wasn’t necessarily drawn up.
If the Saints were losing games 38-35, with the offense playing a full 60 minutes of football every week, I’d be considerably less concerned. But that’s not what we’re watching. We’re watching an offense underachieve for two, sometimes three quarters of nearly every game, only to come alive when Shough starts putting the team on his back.
And that raises a pretty uncomfortable question.
What, exactly, is Kellen Moore bringing to the table?
Moore arrived in New Orleans with a reputation as one of football’s bright offensive minds. But the slow starts that have followed him throughout his career as a play caller haven’t disappeared now that he’s the head coach.
I don’t need to bury you in statistics about the Saints’ slow starts. You’ve heard them all. At this point, we’re watching one of the worst first-quarter offenses in football, and these problems didn’t suddenly appear when Moore arrived in New Orleans.
After Monday night’s game, Moore himself acknowledged that preparation was an issue.
Preparation. From the head coach.
When the same problem keeps happening, at some point it stops being an occasional bad week and starts becoming an indictment of the person responsible for fixing it.
And Monday night offered another glaring example of the failure to adjust.
Asim Richards struggled badly against Las Vegas, making three costly mistakes in the fourth quarter that helped cost the Saints the game. Yet against Atlanta, he was repeatedly left on an island, getting beaten quickly while Shough was forced to run for his life.
I don’t even want to watch the film to count how many times it happened.
At some point, the coaching staff has to recognize that a struggling tackle needs help. You can’t keep sending him out there, watching him get beaten, and expecting your franchise quarterback to somehow survive the consequences.
That’s not simply a personnel problem. That’s a preparation and coaching problem.
I’m not putting everything that happened Monday night on Kellen Moore. Brandon Staley certainly deserves his share of the blame for a defense that looked completely unprepared. And the game really began slipping away late in the first quarter when Kendre Miller fumbled and gave Atlanta the ball only 22 yards away from the end zone. Moore can’t hold onto the football for him.
But Miller is becoming another frustrating example of potential that never quite translates into reliability. The Saints made their roster decisions with Miller firmly in their plans, while Devin Neal and Audric Estimé ultimately ended up elsewhere. Given what we’ve seen, it’s fair to question whether they backed the right horse.
I’m not blaming Moore for last season’s 6-11 record. That roster wasn’t going to the playoffs, regardless of who was coaching it. But this season is different. Despite the deficiencies and lack of depth on defense, this is a team that should be competing for a playoff berth.
That’s especially frustrating when you look around the league.
Ben Johnson has transformed the direction of the Chicago Bears. Liam Coen made an immediate difference in Jacksonville. Klint Kubiak has the Raiders clicking.
These are the kinds of innovative offensive minds NFL franchises are increasingly willing to build around.
Frankly, it’s a shame the timing didn’t work out differently. Klint Kubiak was already in New Orleans, but it took a Super Bowl championship in Seattle to establish him as the kind of head coaching candidate the Saints could have used.
And here’s what makes the possibility of wasting this opportunity so infuriating.
Caleb Williams was a major reason Chicago could attract Johnson. Trevor Lawrence gave Coen a franchise quarterback to work with in Jacksonville.
I’ll go a step further. I would argue that Shough has put better quarterback play on film than either of those guys, even after they’ve been paired with their celebrated offensive coaches.
And Shough isn’t the only reason to be excited.
Chris Olave is a legitimate receiving weapon. Jordyn Tyson offers tremendous upside. Kelvin Banks Jr. looks like a cornerstone at left tackle, and the last two weeks have demonstrated just how much this offense suffers without him.
Sure, the defense needs considerable work. Outside of Chase Young, there aren’t many players I’d consider untouchable.
But that’s fine. Finding a franchise quarterback is the hardest part of building a contender. And the Saints have already done it.
Which brings me back to Mickey Loomis.
For most of his tenure as general manager, Loomis enjoyed the luxury of having Sean Payton. There were certainly moments when another organization might have fired Payton, particularly during those three consecutive 7-9 seasons.
But there was an enormous difference. Even when the Saints were losing, Payton’s offenses were thriving. Drew Brees and company could put up points with anybody. The problem was a defense that couldn’t stop anybody.
Ironically, it was Dennis Allen who eventually fixed that problem.
With Payton, you could see exactly what the head coach brought to the organization. You knew what he was capable of. And, of course, he’d already delivered a Super Bowl championship.
What is the equivalent argument for Moore? What part of this team can we point to and say, That’s Kellen Moore’s brilliance at work?
I hope we find an answer before the season ends.
Because the Saints’ handling of Allen should serve as a warning. They waited too long to make a change that increasingly seemed inevitable. Loyalty and patience became liabilities rather than virtues.
And I fear the organization could make the same mistake again.
And I want to be clear about something: I like Kellen Moore. He seems like a genuinely good guy, and this team appears to have better chemistry than anything we’ve seen in New Orleans since Payton left the building. That’s not nothing. Creating a locker room where players believe in each other and their coach matters.
But chemistry doesn’t win football games by itself. At some point, that positive culture has to translate into preparation, execution, and results on the field.
If Moore can’t turn this offense into a well-oiled machine by the end of the season, the Saints need to move on. Not because of one embarrassing Monday night loss, or even because of their final record, but because an offensive-minded head coach needs to demonstrate that he’s capable of getting the most out of his offense.
And if that change becomes necessary, New Orleans could be the most attractive head coaching vacancy in football. With Shough, Olave, Tyson, and Banks, the Saints would have the foundation that every aspiring offensive mastermind dreams of inheriting.
Shough, in particular, is the prize.
The Saints could be the hottest girl at the dance, with every eligible bachelor hoping for a chance. Instead, they might spend another year with the dropout boyfriend who keeps promising he’s going to get his act together.
Maybe he will. And I genuinely hope he does.
But if we’re still having this conversation in January, Benson and Loomis need to stop waiting for potential to become production.
I want Kellen Moore to succeed. I just don’t want the Saints to waste Tyler Shough waiting for him to figure out how.