The New Orleans Saints knew they’d eventually face adversity this season, and it finally came in waves on Sunday afternoon.
It occurred three plays in the game when center Erik McCoy went down with a groin injury, and the Saints’ explosive run game might as well have exited with him.
It occurred when the Saints faced their first deficit of the season, after Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley exploded for a 65-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter.
And it occurred in the final minute, when three Saints defenders ran into one another and allowed a simple Dallas Goedert catch turn into a game-changing 61-yard play. The adversity unfolded further when Barkley then ran into the end zone for go-ahead score, and again when Derek Carr’s interception sealed New Orleans’ brutal 15-12 loss to the Eagles.
“It’s not going to be that easy all the time,” Carr said.
The Saints are 2-1, still tied for first place in the NFC South with plenty of football left to play. But for the first time this year, New Orleans must regroup and find solutions after the Eagles bottled up what had been the most explosive offense in the league. After all, the Saints managed just 219 yards. In each of their first two games, New Orleans had surpassed that total — by halftime.
Losses like this can bring lessons. Standing at the lectern for his post-game press conference, coach Dennis Allen said he would have to study the tape to learn how, for instance, the Eagles went about stopping his team’s run game.
Philadelphia was a team that entered the afternoon giving up 6.4 yards per carry, but by the end of the game, the Saints averaged just 3.1 yards on 29 attempts (89 total yards). Allen’s first initial impression was that the Eagles took over the trenches, adding the Saints weren’t “good from an assignment standpoint.”
But finding other answers could present more of a challenge. How was it that Allen’s defense could really give a 61-yard play — on third-and-16, no less — after the offense had put together a 50-yard drive that ended with Carr finding wide receiver Chris Olave for a 13-yard touchdown? What led to Will Harris to run into Jordan Howden and Marshon Lattimore, allowing Goedert’s big play to happen?
“Yeah, it’s disappointing,” Allen said.
The cruel part about a loss like the one the Saints suffered to the Eagles is that New Orleans could have easily touted its resiliency if the result had gone the other way.
When the offense struggled to start, and it became clear New Orleans would have to find another way to win rather than lighting up the scoreboard, its defense responded to the challenge. Drive after drive, the unit found ways to make stops. Sometimes, it was with relentless, dominating effort, like on Philly’s opening series when Alontae Taylor and Carl Granderson crushed Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts for a sack. Later, the Saints came up with timely turnovers: safety Tyrann Mathieu picked off Hurts in the end zone, and Willie Gay recovered a fumble forced by Granderson when he stripped Hurts on a scramble.
Then, when the defense started to falter and Barkley broke free for his 65-yard touchdown, it was the offense’s turn to respond. Carr first helped the Saints get into field goal range, leading to Blake Grupe’s 38-yarder to make it 7-6. And on New Orleans’ next possession, Carr led his best drive of the afternoon.
Starting at the 50-yard line — thanks in part to a curious decision from the Eagles to attempt a 60-yard field goal that missed — Carr was precise when he needed to be. He found Olave for a 29-yard gain that helped minimize an unnecessary roughness penalty on tackle Trevor Penning. Then, for the go-ahead score, Carr correctly recognized the Cover-0 look in front of him, saw a safety on Olave and exploited the mismatch once the wide receiver got wide open in the end zone.
The Saints' 2-point attempt failed, but they had a 12-7 lead with 2:03 remaining.
A minute of game time later, Carr was back on the field — staring down a three-point deficit.
“Most of these games, it comes down to one possession,” said Carr, who had 142 yards on 14-of-25 passing for one touchdown and an interception.
As it turns out, the Eagles are the team that gets to boast about responding to adversity. Like the Saints, Philadelphia dealt with injuries: star wide receiver A.J. Brown (hamstring) didn’t play, and they lost tackle Lane Johnson (concussion), guard Mekhi Becton (finger) and wide receiver DeVonta Smith (concussion) over the course of afternoon. They can point to how they bowed their necks in key moments, like when the defense responded with a fourth-down stop after the Saints recovered a blocked punt at Philadelphia’s 27-yard line in the second half.
They even get to talk trash. Former Saints safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, now with the Eagles, screamed in Philadelphia’s locker room how the Saints were “pretenders” rather than contenders, according to the NFL Network.
“They have Derek Carr, remember that,” Gardner-Johnson yelled.
Carr, who wasn’t asked about Gardner-Johnson's comments, said the Saints were disappointed but would make the necessary corrections. The page will turn quickly. The Saints travel to Atlanta next week to face the Falcons in a pivotal NFC South showdown.
“We still believe,” Carr said. “We know we’re a good football team.”
