The Saints finished their season with a bang Sunday.
Their 48-17 flogging of the Falcons at the Caesars Superdome put a bow on the 2023 season and helped salvage what otherwise was a disappointing campaign.
Season-ending wins simply don’t get any sweeter than handing the hated Atlanta Falcons the second-worst beatdown in the 57-year history of the teams’ longstanding rivalry.
“It was fun today,” rookie receiver A.T. Perry said.
The sellout crowd enjoyed every minute of the blowout as well, including the controversial last-minute touchdown that cemented the Saints’ highest scoring output ever against the Falcons.
The win was the Saints’ fourth in their final five games and allowed them to avoid a second consecutive losing season. It also gave Dennis Allen the first winning season of his head coaching career.
At the same time, it also served as a painful reminder of what could have been and what should have been, if only this team had realized its potential sooner rather than later.
Anyone who watched the Saints bash the Bucs and flog the Falcons the past two weeks could see that the best team in the division resided in New Orleans.
And therein lies the shame of it all.
The Saints missed the playoffs. Again. The NFC South’s best team will be watching a decidedly less talented squad play a home playoff game next week in Tampa.
New Orleans Saints fan Larry Rolling holds his last sign of the Saints season at the Caesars Superdome on New Orleans, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024. (Staff photo by David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune | NOLA.com)
As good as Sunday looked and felt, that shortfall must be recognized. The Saints’ brain trust can’t afford to delude itself. When management and ownership sit down to evaluate the season, they can’t sugarcoat things.
The reality still stands. This team should have made the playoffs. It should have won the division. Those were the expectations from everyone in the building on Airline Drive.
Players. Coaches. Management.
And it didn’t happen.
Despite playing one of the easiest schedules in the league.
Despite avoiding nearly every elite quarterback in the game.
Despite being relatively healthy for most of the year.
The Saints had all those things go their way and still fell short.
There needs to be consequences for this shortcoming. In that regard, the season was a failure. And changes need to be made.
The staff could use some fresh blood and new ideas. Credit this year’s group for making the adjustments needed to improve as the season progressed, but those changes took far too long to occur, and that slow transition cost the Saints in the end.
This roster also needs work. A complete overhaul isn’t necessary, but the lineup needs to get younger and more athletic in several areas.
The emergence of young offensive playmakers in the second half of the season was encouraging. In Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, A.T. Perry, Juwan Johnson and Kendre Miller, the Saints have a solid nucleus of skill players to build around on offense. Their development, along with the improvement Derek Carr displayed down the stretch, give the Saints reason for encouragement.
Defensively, the Saints desperately need to solve their pass-rush woes. They were fortunate to avoid most of the league’s top quarterbacks this season, but that won’t be the case next year. Patrick Mahomes, Dak Prescott, Jalen Hurts and Justin Herbert will challenge the Saints in ways they weren’t this season.
“As we do with everything, we’re not going to make any snap judgments to anything,” Allen said. “We’re going to take a minute to reflect on everything from the season. Then we’re going to make any decision we feel like, and I feel like, are best for our team and our organization.”
Those discussions will be easier to make after the way the Saints finished the season.
When the Saints lost to the Lions in Week 13, Allen challenged his team to win its final five games and run the table. And the Saints almost did. If not for an ugly loss to the Rams in Week 16, they would have rallied their way into the playoffs.
Instead, they’re also-rans.
But it says something about Allen and his staff that the Saints responded the way they did down the stretch.
“He’s a good dude and a great coach,” veteran safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “You want to play hard for him and see him do well.”
Added Taysom Hill: “There’s no quit in this team, and that starts with the head guy. As you go evaluate a staff or a head coach, go watch the film and guys were playing hard (here). And he led that.”
Allen certainly deserves credit for holding things together when things could have splintered. But he and his staff also have to answer for another lost season.
The overriding takeaway from the 2023 season: It wasn’t good enough.