The painful truth: Calamity in Carolina proves Saints are too flawed to overcome the adversity they've faced this year

The wheels came off in Carolina.

I know there’s a lot of you who were ahead of the curve on this one. Hell, Alvin Kamara and Chris Olave were talking about it in the losing locker room in Week 4, back when this Saints season was still filled with promise and they were fed up with years of not being able to figure out how to finish close games.

And, of course, there is a large faction of the Saints fan base that has been calling for total rebuilds or coach firings since midway through the 2022 season.

But this was the game where the wheels actually came off.

Whether the major aftershocks of this loss come Monday morning or in January, people will remember this specific calamity in Carolina.

They’ll remember that the Saints lost to the 1-7 Panthers. The only team in the NFL with more losses than the Saints heading into Week 9. A team with an even more depleted roster than their own.

So how, exactly, did the Saints pull off their seventh consecutive loss under those circumstances?! Honestly, I don’t really know – especially when you consider these staggering historical numbers that Nick also detailed in his analysis:

The Panthers are the first team in the Super Bowl era to win a game with▪️under 250 total yards gained▪️0 takeaways▪️425+ total yards allowed pic.twitter.com/Jrq80FLxbE— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) November 3, 2024

Saints outgained the Panthers by 150+ yards, ran for 150+ yards, and won the turnover battleOver the last 20 years, teams had gone 275-0 with that formula.Now 275-1.— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) November 3, 2024

The Saints are 0-2 under Dennis Allen when rushing for 195+ yards and having 0 turnovers like they did today. The franchise was 12-0 when doing that prior to 2022. pic.twitter.com/1pq30iPkHd— Jeff Asher (@Crimealytics) November 3, 2024

But here’s what I do know: This 2024 Saints team simply isn’t good enough or deep enough to overcome the adversity it has faced this year.

Quick disclaimer: Yes, injuries are a real factor. They were still missing Erik McCoy and Rashid Shaheed and Marshon Lattimore and Paulson Adebo, among others Sunday. And Derek Carr looked rusty in his first game back from an oblique injury. And then Olave left the field on a stretcher in the first quarter with his second concussion of the season, which affected the team both football-wise and emotionally.

But this time, the Saints still had arguably still had the more talented roster even with all of those absences. And they were playing with a lead most of the game. And the other team didn’t make any particularly special plays throughout the afternoon.

And the Saints just simply didn’t play good enough football while blowing leads of 6-0, 13-7 and 22-17.

“This one hurts. If I was our fans, I’d be pissed right now, because we are too,” Carr said with dead-on accuracy. “It just baffles us to come in here and get a loss like that. That one hurts.”

“Obviously I'm hurting right now, hurting for our city, hurting for our organization, hurting for those guys in that locker room,” coach Dennis Allen said. “I know they put their heart and soul into it, and to keep coming out on the negative end is quite challenging.”

So where to begin to try and explain how the Saints managed such a historic loss? We should probably start at the end, where the sparks really started to shoot out from under the car on the pavement after the wheels were sprinkled across the highway.

The Saints offense came up incredibly small down the stretch, with two holding penalties, an offensive face mask penalty and a sack allowed over the course of their final three drives – which amounted to a total of zero points.

Then the final offensive play was a major flop, with Carr throwing a low-percentage deep ball to a well-covered Cedrick Wilson deep down the field on fourth-and-4 from near midfield when New Orleans still had 1:09 remaining and just needed a field goal to win.

To be fair, my quick glance through the replays didn’t really reveal any better options. Allen said tight end Juwan Johnson was the first option on the play, but he appeared to be decently covered in man coverage. So Carr said the next read was to find “the best matchup,” and he said the Saints had talked all week about trying to go away from Carolina’s top cornerback, Jaycee Horn.

So he tried Wilson against cornerback Mike Jackson – and you know how it turned out.

Carr was a little below average over the course of the game, finishing 18-of-31 for 236 yards with one touchdown pass (a spectacular catch by tight end Foster Moreau) and zero turnovers. I actually think the Saints’ pass protection got worse for him as the game went on.

Carr himself said he felt his rustiest early in the game, when he clearly missed some open throws. And Allen and Carr agreed that may have actually been where the Saints lost the game – when they settled for field goals after 10-play and 11-play drives on their first two possessions.

The Saints’ run game was pretty good all day, especially early. Alvin Kamara was spectacular while carrying the rest of the team on his back. His 36 touches were a career high for a total of 215 yards from scrimmage (115 rushing, 60 receiving).

“I feel for dudes, especially some of the younger dudes because right now all they know is losing,” Kamara said. “You know, a lot of guys don't know what it feels like to win, and that's what hurts me the most. Like, I hate to talk about the past, but I know what it feels like to win and I know what winning takes. And it's not there right now.”

The Saints’ secondary held up surprisingly well considering the injuries to Lattimore, Adebo, Kool-Aid McKinstry and Rico Payton. Emergency starter Shemar Jean-Charles made perhaps the biggest play of the game with a spectacular interception that he wrestled away from Panthers receiver Xavier Legette in the fourth quarter.

But the Saints’ pass rush was a disappointment, as it has been for much of the year, only sacking quarterback Bryce Young twice (once on a 2-point conversion try).

There were some other glaring flaws: A bad punt by Matthew Hayball that set up a Panthers TD drive (though Hayball also made of the Saints’ best plays of the day by converting a fake punt). Two substitution issues on both defense and offense that forced the Saints to burn timeouts early in the second half. A handful of missed tackles in key moments – though not the epidemic we saw in previous games.

We also didn’t really see the effort and energy concerns that crept up during the heart of the losing streak, and players and Allen universally said they felt good about that aspect of Sunday’s game.

“I just think that when it was our time to go make a play, we didn’t, and they did,” linebacker Pete Werner said. “And just those few plays, it’s just crazy how every play matters. That’s why you get paid in this league, you gotta go out and make the plays when you get the chance. And we weren’t able to do that, and it’s very frustrating.”