Arizona Cardinals

New Orleans Saints: Blast from the past

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 11:35 p.m. ET

Fansided, Tony Twillie/FanSided via Who Dat Dish

Welcome back to the Saints of the late ‘00’s and early 2010’s. Who Dat Nation has kind of missed you guys.

Sunday’s game against the Arizona Cardinals seemed to heading in one of several directions. Each team features a defense that contains notable players, and flashes of brilliance. Arizona is only a year removed from playing in the NFC Championship. While the Cardinals struggled this season, they still feature many of the pieces that have made them a playoff contender recently. The New Orleans Saints’ defensive squad is an up and coming unit with great potential.

Or it could have been an offensive assault on the senses. Carson Palmer is still a good quarterback for Arizona and David Johnson is a workhorse back. Both players are a stable of receivers led by the faithful Larry Fitzgerald. Moreover, Fitzgerald is one of the best and most respected receivers in the league. On the other hand, the Saints are led by Drew Brees, a shoo-in Hall of Fame QB who leads arguably the top offense in the league.

In this case, the latter prevailed. If anyone resmebled a defensive purist, one needn’t watch this game. Though some nice defensive plays happened, the game was all about putting up points. In fact, the most plays and points in the NFL this season. This was all about scoring – if you don’t believe that, look at the 4th quarter alone where the teams combined for 5 TD’s.

The game didn’t always looked to be heading this way. The first quarter left the impression it might simply be another meandering stroll through mediocrity for our side. One game long storyline was the Saints getting handled at the line of scrimmage. On the Cardinals’ first possession they scored a rushing TD on a wildcat play, a 49-yard TD run. The Saints top 5 tacklers were all the defensive backfield. That’s a disturbing stat. Meanwhile two of Arizona’s three linebackers were the top two tacklers. That means their linemen were doing a better job of winning the battles up front and/or keeping their linebackers clean to make tackles. Henceforth, the Saints front six too often got caught up in the wash of blocking at the line.

Offensively, the Saints scored 48 points. While 48 points reflect a smooth running high powered offense, the fact that this lead didn’t seem safe until Drew Brees’ only pass to Colby Fleener was caught just inside of two minutes, made it a tenuous game. The Black and Gold scored on eight of their 12 possessions (and two of those possessions were the ends of each half), and their lead was still not safe. That is truly vintage 2010 Saints.

Another reason this reminded one of the old Saints is that the Black and Gold created turnovers. Two takeaways created two extra possessions and that may have been the difference in this game.

Game observations:

It will be interesting to see how the final 2 games of 2016 play out for the Saints. Will they continue to show up? So many young players are looking to solidify their spot on next year’s roster, so many veterans are fighting to show relevance. Hopefully, they won’t go down without a fight.