Shorthanded Saints lose to Eagles, offense pads stats in garbage time

The New Orleans Saints took advantage of soft coverage from the Philadelphia Eagles late in their Week 11 loss to pad their stats in garbage time:

Woof. The final score made this game look closer than it was — the New Orleans Saints trailed the Philadelphia Eagles 33-7 going into the fourth quarter. With an injury to top corner Darius Slay and a comfortable lead, the Eagles took their foot off the gas pedal and let the Saints cut into that deficit. Almost immediately, really, with Trevor Siemian lobbing a touchdown pass to Marquez Callaway from 26 yards out just 11 seconds into the fourth quarter. It didn’t matter and they lost 40-29.

But let’s focus on what really happened here: the Saints offense looked just as pathetic as you’d expect with half a dozen starters missing. Siemian spent last season on the practice squad and looked like that’s where he belonged in this outing. He threw two terrible interceptions, one of them returned 50 yards for a touchdown by Slay, and was missing open receivers all day. It was already a bad day, but his deficiencies made it worse.

So why didn’t they pull him out of the game? Taysom Hill was the only other active quarterback with rookie draft pick Ian Book a healthy scratch, but Hill’s foot injury this week limited him to just one practice session and the Saints had no plans of getting him on the field. He never even put on his helmet and was functionally standing inside an invisible glass box labeled “break in case of emergency.” Hill didn’t play a single snap in his usual position-less role. Barring a serious injury to Siemian, his job was just to hold a clipboard like any other backup in this league.

It’s tempting to look at this fourth quarter rally as a sign of progress, but it’s fool’s gold. The Eagles made the same mistake as the Titans last week and the Falcons a game earlier. All three teams went into soft prevent coverage in the final period, allowing the Saints to put up 53 of their 75 points in that quarter. When their opponents are taking them seriously and putting in the effort to pressure Siemian and challenge his receivers, Sean Payton hasn’t had an answer for them.

That doesn’t bode well for their upcoming game with the Buffalo Bills. The Thanksgiving night game four days away (roughly 100 hours, if you’d rather look at it that way). Buffalo was dismantled by Jonathan Taylor and the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday but we’ve seen before that other game results don’t matter when teams play the Saints. Just look at their losses to the New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons, and Tennessee Titans (who just got whacked by the lowly Houston Texans this week) earlier this season. Every opponent has to be weighed on their own merits, and the Bills have enough firepower to give New Orleans trouble.

November wasn’t kind to the Saints. They have a shot at turning it around in the Thanksgiving nightcap against the Bills, and they just might do it given how well they’ve played strong teams this year. But if nothing else, this three-game losing skid has to put a dampener on the expectations for this season. At this point fans should just be happy to finish the season with a winning record.

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