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The New Orleans Saints took a fall in the latest NFL power rankings from Doug Farrar over at Touchdown Wire, slipping from the No. 3 spot to No. 4 after an ugly home upset to the Atlanta Falcons last Sunday. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time, with the top-seeded San Francisco 49ers suffering their first loss of the year. If the Saints had handled their business, they could have seized the top spot in the NFC. Now, they’re behind both the 49ers and Green Bay Packers, with seven games left to play.
Here’s some of what Farrar wrote about the Saints’ underwhelming day against Atlanta, and what he’s looking for out of them in the coming weeks:
Does this game portend larger issues, or was it an anomaly? The Saints have struggled with slow starts this season, and their offensive line is struggling with ineffectiveness, perhaps exacerbated by injuries. The most disconcerting injury right now, though, is the hamstring strain suffered by top cornerback Marshon Lattimore. Lattimore is week to week at this point, and the Saints next face a Buccaneers offense that knows how to exploit weakened secondaries
The 49ers are still ranked above the Saints in Farrar’s power rankings, but barely. The New England Patriots are sandwiched in between both of them, and the only team to have beaten New England this year — Lamar Jackson’s Baltimore Ravens — owns the No. 1 spot. It’s easy to see a path for the Saints to make a late bid for the highest spot in these power rankings, but they need to rebound in a big way after the speedbump they hit on Sunday.
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