Saints lose to the Chiefs 27-21

This is your weekly reminder that the Saints are a team that has far too few stars to compensate for even a few significant injuries. What they have instead had to deal with is injuries to most of the few stars they do have and they have had to watch the tiny bit of depth they were able to build become eradicated in that same rash of injuries. This game is EXACTLY what happens when a fatally flawed and wounded roster simply cannot keep its head above water.

The Saints didn’t lose to the Chiefs because Kansas City is a great football team, arguably they actually looked better than the Chiefs for large parts of the game. What killed the Saints was their offensive line made up of zombies and three bad plays none of which they could afford. The Brees pick 6 was a Brutal play. Especially when you consider the fact that the Saints were able to move the ball as they wanted to for most of the day, and Eric Berry made a great play to break up the pass which of course ended up being caught by the Chiefs and returned for a TD (and by the way Brees made a better tackle attempt during that pick than Byrd did on the Chiefs 46 yard TD).

Ingram’s fumble is a play that its difficult to blame on him, but in that situation you still have to. The defense made a great play, but the reality is that the fumble came as a result of  a play where Ingram was fighting for extra yardage and didn’t make sure to secure the ball with both hands. In the red zone, on the road, in a close game, you CAN’T make a mistake like that.

The final nail in the Saints coffin was when the Chiefs ran out of bounds on third down with over two minutes left on the clock and it looked like Brees was going to have a great chance to march the Saints down for another game winning TD. The only problem with the play was that on the back side Nick Fairly committed an egregious personal foul penalty where he slammed a Chief player to the ground causing an automatic first down and helping to remove any chance the Saints had of winning. Knowing what we know about Fairley’s personal situation with his mother having passed this week I can understand the lapse in judgement, and the reality is he’s been really good this year, but the fact remains that his play likely cost the Saints the game.

Observations:

• The Saints are cursed, snake bitten, pick your expression but they can’t catch a break with injuries
• The WR corp is for real
• seriously, they are going to be good for a LONG time and Michael Thomas is going to be an absolute monster
• The Saints have zero starting caliber corners right now, and it’s a major reason for this loss
• the Team needs to just put Terron Armstead on IR and let him come back 100% next year.
• Dennis Allen has his defense playing hard, and mostly disciplined, but the lack of talent is crippling
• Jairus Byrd is absolutely worthless to this defense at this point. His tackle ‘attempt’ on the Chiefs long screen pass was embarrassing. I believe its mostly due to injuries, but the fact is that he simply ads nothing now.