National Football League

Saints' fate is in their hands as last 3 games come against fellow bubble teams

Published Dec. 20, 2023 2:21 p.m. ET

The 2023 season has been frustrating for the Saints and their fans. With that being said, New Orleans has already matched its win total from last year, is tied for first place in the NFC South and can win the division by winning their final three games.

Their 7-7 record reflects a middling team with an easy split to their success and failure — they're 1-5 against teams currently .500 or better, 6-2 against teams currently with a losing record. Their final three opponents are in a similar ballpark — the 7-7 Rams, then two division opponents who have already beaten the Saints in the Buccaneers (7-7) and Falcons (6-8).

Win even two of those last three, and the Saints have at least an 86 percent chance of making the playoff according to the New York Times playoff simulator, salvaging a winning record and a first postseason appearance in the post-Drew Brees era.

The final sprint starts with a long trip on a short week, flying to Los Angeles to face the Rams on Thursday night. It's their second quick turnaround this season, having lost to the Jaguars on a Thursday in Week 7, but a win is crucial to their playoff chances.

"Yeah, it's tough, it's challenging when you have to go on the road for a Thursday night game, particularly when you have to travel across the country," coach Dennis Allen said Monday. "This is the first year they've had teams that have had two Thursday night games in a season and we happen to be one of those teams. It is what it is. We have to figure out a way to get ourselves prepared and healthy and healed up and ready to go Thursday night."

Allowing players to physically recover with three fewer days of prep time is always difficult, and going across multiple time zones while doing so doesn't help. It hasn't yielded a huge difference on the scoreboard — road teams in the NFL this year win 43.8 percent of the time, but road teams on Thursday games win 41.2 percent of the time, so considering the small sample size, if the Saints were to win, the Thursday road success rate would be higher than the overall road win rate.

In winning back-to-back games against the Panthers and Giants, the Saints have been able to solve some lingering problems — their red-zone offense, a persistent source of trouble in the first three months of the season, has been much improved. In the last three games, New Orleans has gone 9-for-10 scoring touchdowns in the red zone, a success rate better than double their production in the first 11 games, when they went 17-for-40.

Quarterback Derek Carr set his season high with three touchdown passes in the win Sunday against the Giants, and did so without having receivers Chris Olave or Michael Thomas, both sidelined by injury. In his last two games, he has five touchdown passes against one interception, after totaling one touchdown against two picks in the previous three games.

On the other side of the ball, the Saints' run defense, which had given up at least 120 rushing yards in the previous six games, held the Giants in check, holding them to 60 yards and limiting Saquon Barkley to 14 yards on nine carries. They'll face one of the NFL's hottest backs in the Rams' Kyren Williams, who has five 100-yard rushing games in the last seven weeks and needs only 47 to reach 1,000 for the season.

The last time Carr played in SoFi Stadium, it was a Thursday in December last year, and his Raiders saw a 16-3 lead on the Rams disappear due to two touchdowns in the final four minutes. Carr only passed for 137 yards and had two interceptions, one on a final desperation pass after losing the lead with 10 seconds left.

He's hoping for a much different finish this time, and success on Thursday would give them a long holiday weekend to rest and prepare for a huge divisional showdown on New Year's Eve with the Bucs in Tampa. The priority is continuing to play at a high level in Los Angeles and building on the success of the last two wins.

"We're all just getting more comfortable with each other," Carr said. "This is some of the things in training camp that we saw we could be. It's been clicking for us. Everyone's on the same page, everyone's doing their job. That sounds so cliche, but that's a big part of it ... It's been a lot of fun. It's been nice to see what it can be and what we're hoping to improve on also."

Greg Auman is FOX Sports' NFC South reporter, covering the Buccaneers, Falcons, Panthers and Saints. He is in his 10th season covering the Bucs and the NFL full-time, having spent time at the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.