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Jameis Winston against the guy who took his job, on the team that drafted him first overall. Tom Brady against the team that humbled him in a two-game sweep for the first time in his decades-long NFL career. The Saints with an opportunity to bring the Buccaneers’ long offseason celebrating their Super Bowl win to a screeching halt. A Week 1 matchup in Tampa Bay is boiling over with potential storylines, but NBC Sports’ Peter King doesn’t want any of it.
“To schedule the Saints or Bears or Giants here (all Bucs home foes this year) doesn’t seem smart because any of them could be a game that’s over by halftime,” King mused during his recent Football Morning in America column. “Not so with Buffalo or Dallas. The Bills could go to Tampa and win the opener, and the Cowboys, with Dak Prescott leading an explosive offense, would be able to go toe-to-toe with the Arians/Brady offense. We’ll see, but those are the two sexiest home foes for the Bucs, and I think one of them will open the NFL’s 102nd season.”
He has a point — the Saints did put the game away by halftime in their last visit to Tampa Bay, going into the second half with a 31-0 lead (and winning 38-3, with Arians kicking a late field goal in a bit of sour sportsmanship to avoid conceding a blowout). Still, he’s putting a Bills team that got stomped out by the Chiefs — who couldn’t touch Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl — and a Cowboys squad that isn’t much better than it was last year, with or without Prescott, high above New Orleans. That doesn’t pass the smell test.
Sure, the Saints have taken plenty of losses. And not just in the retirement of Drew Brees, but in the departures of franchise staples like Thomas Morstead and Josh Hill, plus higher-profile starters including Janoris Jenkins, Trey Hendrickson, Emmanuel Sanders, and Jared Cook. And that’s not all of them.
But King is going a bridge too far. He’s put the Saints in the doldrums with the Bears and Giants. New Orleans has won 49 games over the last four years — more than Chicago has won since 2013, and more than New York has won since 2012. That’s poor company to surround the Saints with just because the Bears lucked into a rookie quarterback they plan to bench behind Andy Dalton and the Giants finally figured out how to recruit good free agents.
We’ll know very soon how the NFL schedule makers regard New Orleans. It’s anyone’s guess as to how many prime time games the Saints will receive after losing Brees and all those other contributors, and they could very well start with a lowkey season opener while the Buccaneers enjoy the spotlight a while longer. Considering the viewership numbers the Saints attract and the drama at play in a Week 1 rematch with the Bucs, though, you have to think it’s appealing to decision makers in the league office.
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