Saints find offense in rout over Falcons, but no help elsewhere as they’re eliminated from playoffs
The production crew of the New Orleans Saints made the decision to display the scores from across the NFL on the video board late in the third quarter of their 48-17 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. The Caesars Superdome crowd had come to life following a pivotal fourth-and-goal stop by the New Orleans defense.
However, one game was noticeably missing as the results were rolling in: Tampa Bay vs. Carolina.
A disappointing outcome would have been revealed if the crew had displayed the score. It was the Buccaneers’ victory.
In New Orleans’ season finale, the Saints found their offense but failed to find the help they needed to make the playoffs. New Orleans was eliminated from the NFC South when the Buccaneers clinched the division with a 9-0 win over the lowly Panthers. And the Saints were kept out of the final wild card spot in the NFC after the Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Bears, hours after the Saints’ game concluded.
It hardly mattered that quarterback Derek Carr arguably produced his finest outing of the season with a 264-yard, four-touchdown performance. Nor did it matter the Saints put up a season-high 48 points. Even the Saints’ controversial fake-kneel touchdown mattered little in the long run, no matter how upset Falcons coach Arthur Smith got.
The Saints (9-8) took care of business against the Falcons, but their playoff fate was left out of their hands.
The Saints did not win the NFC South, did not earn the seventh seed and instead missed the playoffs for a third straight year.
“I’m pleased with the way we finished the season,” Allen said. “I’m not pleased with the way the record played out overall over a 17-game season. That’s not what we aspire to be, but I was proud of the way our guys continued to respond and continued to fight back.”
The stakes for Sunday’s game were clear for the Saints. To make the playoffs, they would need to beat the Falcons — and for either the Panthers to beat the Buccaneers, or for the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers to lose. The scenario involving the Panthers would mean the Saints would clinch the NFC South, while the other would have guaranteed the final wild-card spot.
Any possibility would have been meaningless without beating the Falcons. And to start, the Saints appeared to be in serious trouble in that regard.
The Falcons — starting Desmond Ridder over an injured Taylor Heinicke (ankle) — punished the Saints for defensive lapses early on. Atlanta came into the afternoon with only four pass plays of 50-plus yards this season, and yet against the Saints, the Falcons managed two on their first two drives.
Ridder connected on a wide-open 56-yard pass to Scotty Miller on the opening series, setting up a 15-yard touchdown to tight end Jonnu Smith. On Atlanta’s second drive, the Falcons again took advantage of a missed assignment when Saints cornerback Alontae Taylor mistimed his jump of a route and rookie Bijan Robinson took off from the flat for a 71-yard score.
But the Saints’ defensive errors didn’t cost them, and the Saints kept up with the Falcons thanks to some high-powered offense of their own.
Carr, the NFL’s most accurate quarterback over the back half of the season, spread the ball around to a variety of playmakers. He found A.T. Perry, Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed all for touchdowns to help New Orleans break open the game in the second half after the teams were tied at 17-17. Many of Carr’s throws demonstrated why the Saints were infatuated with acquiring him in the first place. The 32-year-old needled tight, contested throws that were on time and required near-perfect anticipation.
By the time he hit Perry for a 6-yard touchdown — the rookie’s second score of the game — to make it 41-17, Carr turned to the crowd, looked up to see his dad in the stands and spread his arms to yell, “Are you not entertained?” in the same vein of Russell Crowe’s character in “The Gladiator.”
The Saints hadn’t seen that version of Carr much to begin the year, but increasingly saw it over the final five games.
For us, everything came together at once, according to Carr. “I’m rather pleased with that. As a squad, we really concentrated on thinking, “Yeah, maybe we could have another home game after this,” but in the unlikely event that we didn’t, we wanted to offer our supporters something to show them that their hard work wasn’t in vain.
Despite having a flawless passer rating before the break, Ridder’s performance in the second half was far from ideal. The second-year quarterback went back to his old habits that first cost him the starting position. Ridder found Taylor with an interception in the third quarter. Carr was able to find Olave for the game-winning score after that.
The Saints never lost the lead after that, and Atlanta waved the white flag with more than six minutes left when Ridder was replaced by third-stringer Logan Woodside. He fared no better, throwing an interception to safety Tyrann Mathieu with 1:10 left.
Mathieu’s 74-yard return fell just short of the end zone, which set up the most controversial moment of the afternoon. Although the Saints trotted out Jameis Winston to take a knee from the victory formation, the players overruled offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael’s call to give Jamaal Williams a shot to score his first touchdown of the year instead.
Smith and Allen both were furious. The Falcons coach refused to shake Allen’s hand after the game and instead tore into him for the decision. Allen apologized publicly for the score, and said it wasn’t “acceptable.”
However, once hostilities boiled over, the Saints found themselves in the same situation they started the afternoon in. They returned home to watch other teams decide their fate because they had no idea if they would go to the postseason.
If they had taken care of business early in the season, they could have completely avoided the scenario.
However, New Orleans’ season is now over.
Tight end Taysom Hill stated, “It’s difficult to not think back and reflect on some of the games we lost.” And when you find yourself in a predicament over which you have no control, you begin to reflect, ‘Man, we needed one more to win the division.’
“We cannot linger on such things. It’s not easy to achieve that.
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