After a long 300 day wait, the Saints are finally back in the win column.

New Orleans Saints 26 - 14 New York Giants

The Saints were 1.5 point favorites going into their home matchup against the Giants, the team they had their most recent win against… in December of last year. Spencer Rattler joined the infamous group of NFL quarterbacks to start their career with 10 straight losses, but bounced back with his first career win. This team is one that has been looking for a positive boost to the season and it has finally arrived. 

The Positives

First things first, congratulations to Spencer Rattler. His whole career to this point has been working with backups or fighting for a spot against Tyler Shough, and although he has been playing well, a win was necessary to keep the discussions from getting louder. Prior to this game, Rattler was relying on shorter passes, and the deep balls he has been throwing have been inconsistent at best. He finally connected perfectly on one today with Rashid Shaheed for an 87 yard touchdown, the only offensive touchdown scored today. Oh, and did I mention this was the longest offensive touchdown for the Saints since Drew Brees was our quarterback? Rattler put up a solid final statline with 20 completions on 30 attempts for 225 yards and one touchdown. He avoided putting the ball in harm's way, and before rewatching, seemed to make the right decisions on most passing plays. He also had a solid game on the ground, with 21 yards on 6 carries. This is exactly the type of game us fans have wanted to see from Rattler, and if he can build off of this, the Saints may have their guy.

Kellen Moore had a solid game today with the offensive scheme, as it got 7 different receivers the ball (not including Rattler’s fluke reception), got Kendre Miller over 10 touches again, and reintroduced Taysom Hill with a small role. I’ve given Kellen Moore a good amount of knocks this season, and I have one I want to mention later, but the aggressive move to go for it on 4th and 5 late in the 4th quarter was something I loved seeing. Kellen Moore showed confidence in his guys by going for it here, especially in Rattler, calling a quick pass play that ended in a first down to Rashid Shaheed on a slant. In addition to this, towards the end of the game he fed Kendre Miller, who looked unstoppable on every rush. Kendre Miller was Dennis Allen’s enemy number one, and Kellen Moore has given him a much needed fresh start. As we saw last week vs the Bills, Kendre Miller seems like the best pure rusher on the team right now, which isn’t a slight to Saints legend Kamara, it just is a compliment to how talented Kendre is. He is one of the league’s top running backs in yards after contact and missed tackles forced, so it is essential for this offense that he keeps getting the ball. 

The defense and secondary came alive in this one, with 5 turnovers, 3 of which were fumble recoveries, and 2 being much needed interceptions by Kool-Aid McKinstry. I will talk about the defense’s struggles later, but after the first two drives the defense allowed zero, yes zero, points. They held all Giants rushers outside of Jaxson Dart to less than 4 yards per carry, and got a good amount of pressure on Dart when they brought more than 4 rushers. In addition, we saw Justin Reid go down early in this one with a concussion, forcing Jordan Howden to step up into his role. Jordan Howden and Jonas Sanker looked like a promising duo on the field together, both constantly crashing down to make tackles and both looking solid in coverage. Not only did these two and Kool-Aid step up, but Bryan Bresee had multiple pressures and also forced the fumble on Jordan Howden’s fumble return touchdown. This is a team that is in need of young players to step up, and today the young players on defense did just that.

The Negatives

Although the majority of this game was positive for the Saints, it’s still important to note that there were a few things that need to be improved. The penalties came back in this one, 7 being called on them with false starts and offsides from the offense causing setbacks on drives. The most notable penalty came after Taysom Hill completed a pass to Juwan Johnson to get them to the Giants’ 7 yard line. Torrecelli Simpkins false started on 1st down, leading to 1st and goal from the 12, and the Saints being held to a field goal.

Red zone struggles continued for the team, who are now down at 50% conversion rate for touchdowns in the endzone. They went 0-3 in the redzone today, with playcalling in the area being questionable and execution not being there. Kellen Moore has had moments every game that I question, and the biggest one that comes to mine was the pass play to Kamara with 11 seconds left before the half. With just 11 seconds left, you would expect a pass play that gets to the endzone, and instead no receivers ran past the sticks. The target was a quick out to Kamara, who had no shot at getting out of bounds or to the endzone, and the team had to burn their final timeout with 6 seconds left and ultimately settle for a field goal.

The Saints defense and secondary flashed today, but Staley’s scheme has me questioning any chance the team has of the performance being consistent. Staley has been vocal about his belief of limiting the explosive plays, and that they’ve done, but on the first two drives the Giants were getting anything on the field they wanted in the pass game short of 20 yards down the field. Staley has had the DBs off about 7-10 yards on majority of plays, and seemed to only rush 4 for the good majority of the first half. When doing this, the Giants were able to pick apart the zone defense, and there was essentially zero pressure being put on Dart. It was good to see this change after the defense allowed two straight easy touchdowns, and I hope to see the Saints defense improve every week from here on out.

The final negative, Blake Grupe. Although Grupe did make 4 field goals, he also missed 2 from 52 and 46 yards out. The first could have been due to an announcer’s jinx, if you’re the superstitious type, but the second was just a straight up miss. In games where the saints aren’t able to build a lead like they did today, it can help lead to losses, which we did see play out a few times this season already. Kellen Moore needs to do something about this, whether that be bringing in kickers to tryout, or having a mini-competition between Smyth and Grupe this week at practice.

Closing and Team MVPs

In all honesty, I have waited too long for the Saints to win a game, so I’m going to bask in the glory of this one, even though it was against a team that isn’t exactly great. I’m happy for Spencer Rattler, Kellen Moore, and for the team to finally have some positive momentum. Now, it’s up to the team to take this momentum and put it towards the next two weeks, with winnable games against the Patriots and Bears. 

Offensive MVP: Spencer Rattler

Defensive MVP: Whole defense, they all played their hearts out

Special Teams MVP: NONE.