Will the Saints be able to turn this into a lasting hot start?
Alvin Kamara didn’t express worries about his contract situation, and the New Orleans Saints took full advantage of hapless Carolina. But overreactions will happen, and here are two of them after the Week 1 destruction of the Panthers.
Yes, the final score suggested greatness for the 2024 Saints. But the opponent needs to be considered. Surely better days are ahead, but the Panthers barely looked like an NFL team in the 47-10 loss. And there are plenty of reasons to hesitate before penciling the Saints into the playoff conversation.
Saints QB Derek Carr had one of his best-ever games
Carr couldn’t be stopped. How many times has that sentence been written? The veteran hit on 19 of 23 passes for 200 yards and three touchdowns with no picks. He even carried a couple of times for 13 more yards.
Fairly impressive for sure, but Carr said it didn’t come out of nowhere, according to Fox Sports via Sports Illustrated.
“We knew that we were a good football team coming into this season,” Carr said.“Hopefully the fans got to see what it can be.”
But remember, this is Derek Carr.
Carr couldn’t be stopped. How many times has that sentence been written? The veteran hit on 19 of 23 passes for 200 yards and three touchdowns with no picks. He even carried a couple of times for 13 more yards.
Fairly impressive for sure, but Carr said it didn’t come out of nowhere, according to Fox Sports via Sports Illustrated.
“We knew that we were a good football team coming into this season,” Carr said.“Hopefully the fans got to see what it can be.”
What about Derek Carr's career?
It isn’t horrible, but it’s predictable. His passing yards have the narrow range from 3,270 in his rookie year in 2014 to 4,804 during his best season in 2021. But most of the time he has settled into the high 3,000 range. Looking at his TD passes, the totals are 19, 21, 27, 23, 24, 25 over the last six years. And one of those years was the 4,804 yards where he only had 23 TD tosses.
His current pace is 51 touchdown passes, so the picture is fairly clear. Carr had a great first game against a very weak opponent. He did not suddenly become one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks. The Panthers generated next to no pressure against Carr, the main thing that makes him mortal. Let him get comfortable and he pick apart a defense. Pressure him, and he can wilt.
Still, Allen said he likes what he saw from his signal-caller, according to neworleanssaints.com.
“I thought (Carr) played well,” Allen said. “I thought he managed the game well. The first touchdown pass to (Rashid) Shaheed was awesome. There was a little bit of pressure on him, had to step up in the pocket. He stepped up, made the throw, put it right on the money. That was awesome to see. Him no different than anyone else on our team, we're going to go and look at a handful of plays that ‘ah, man, I wish we would have when we had opportunities.' I think that's the biggest thing we have to focus on is cleaning those things up as we head into Week Two against Dallas.”
Confidence can be fleeting
Certainly the Saints entered the year with confidence as Allen said to espn.com.
“I'd say everyone has an idea of what type of team they think they have a chance to be, and then that gets defined over the course of time,” Allen said. “In that regard, yeah, I'm excited to see exactly what we have and over the course of time, we'll define what kind of team this is really going to be.
“We have a profession where everything that we do is lived out in the public eye and everybody has opinions on what we're doing well or what we're not doing well. That just comes with the job.”
And the confidence will grow after pummeling the Panthers. But staying there is the key. Tight end Juwan Johnson said the urgency is there.
“They're either going to try to keep you in or push you out. That's just the reality of it,” Johnson said. “If we're not doing our jobs, they're going to try to find a way to push you out. So, we know what's at stake for ourselves, for him, for the organization. We don't want another year of not making the playoffs. It's been a long time. That's kind of foreign to the Saints.”
Allen said the big win is a good way to start, according to neworleanssaints.com.
“It was good to see, offensively, we were able to run the football, which I felt like was going to be a key factor for us,” Allen said, “We ran the ball really well, which opened up some things in the play action passing game. We had explosives down the field. That was good to see from the offense.”
What about the Saints’ defense?
Few people expect the Saints to have a season-long dominant defense. It’s not as tough to look good against Bryce Young as it would be to do it against the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott.
But good is good, if even for a week.
“Defensively, we had the three takeaways, had four sacks in the game,” Allen said. “I thought we did a pretty good job minimizing what they were able to do in the running game, which allows you to kind of rush the passer a little more. There are certainly a ton of things we have to get cleaned up. The penalties were too many. That's something we will have to address this week at practice. We still have a lot of things that we have to get better at. Our focus is going to be on making the corrections we need to make from this one, improving on those things and getting ready for Dallas.”
It simply doesn’t make sense, at this point, to expect the Saints defense to carry the team into the postseason. What might make more sense is the offense can elevate above expectations while the defense does the same. And then those two things combine to make the Saints a fairly tough out.
