Atlanta Falcons

Observations From The cheap seats against the Atlanta Falcons

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

Hemlock? Cyanide? Arsenic? Or in the case of our New Orleans Saints offense, defense, or special teams? Pick your poison. Each of them was deadly in last night’s 45-32 trouncing at the hands of the hated Atlanta Falcons.

It’s not simply that the Saints lost to the Falcons – our most hated rivals. And it’s not only that they lost an opportunity in our putrid division to take over first place by gaining their first victory of the season. No, it’s the manner in which the Saints lost, and the things occurring surrounding the team in this loss.

The game opened with a vintage Saints drive, methodically moving the ball down the field on the Falcons. The drive culminated with a Brees to Coby Fleener for an open touchdown pass. Fleener has been much maligned so far this season and rightfully so. His inability to get free, run correct routes, or catch passes has been well documented.

Fleener wasn’t perfect Monday night – the drops still haunted him a couple of times as well, as a lack of knowledge of what play was being called and the situation befuddled him. At least one pass hit him in the chest because he wasn’t ready for it. Obviously quarterback Drew Brees saw pressure coming and knew he needed to get the ball out quickly. Fleener didn’t read the same pressure and wasn’t ready for the pass. But overall his performance was better, unfortunately that isn’t saying much considering how poor it had been to this point.

The Saints looked to be getting off the field with a great defensive stand after Atlanta’s first possession. Tommylee Lewis was back to receive the punt from Atlanta and called for a fair catch but was run into by blocker DeVante’ Harris. One or both of them made contact with the football, and Atlanta was able to recover it deep in Saints territory and score on that possession. This marked the beginning of the end for the Saints.

Atlanta used this energy to propel them forward for the rest of the game. From that point, the Falcons only punted one other time in the game, and the Saints only got one other complete defensive stop all game. Atlanta scored on all but two other possessions in the game. One of those was the final possession, where they could have scored easily but chose to kneel out the final minute.

One fan’s observations from the cheap seats:

The Saints can lose to a lot of teams and it’s just a loss equally bad to all the others. Losing to Atlanta is always worse. Fortunately in the Payton/Brees era, it’s only happened six times in 21 games.

But the way they lost this game – getting so soundly defeated in every aspect of the game, getting beat man for man (particularly our left offensive line), having all the injuries at this time – makes it really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It seems this is that time where all the missteps in free agency and the draft (leaving us with over $40 million in dead cap money) have truly come back to haunt us.