NEW ORLEANS -- With so much talk about things like professionalism and maturity after the New Orleans Saints' 41-10 loss to the Carolina Panthers, it almost seems incidental to talk about the X's and O's.
It also seems impossible to decide where to begin.
The offense and defense both managed to have their worst performance of the year in the same game. The Saints were down 17-0 after a total of just three offensive plays -- one a fumble by Mark Ingram and one an interception on an underthrown deep ball by Drew Brees.
But it wasn’t just a bad start. The Saints also came out after halftime, went three-and-out on offense and then gave up a 69-yard touchdown run to Carolina’s Jonathan Stewart in a total of 61 seconds.
Through three quarters, the Panthers led 38-3 and outgained the Saints 485 yards to 110.
Saints coach Sean Payton said part of his message to the team afterward was that there shouldn’t be anyone who is “befuddled” or “puzzled” as to what went wrong.
“It’s not a question of, 'What do you think ...?'" Payton said. “There’s no question as to why. It’s right out there, we just saw it. We have to look closely at everything: preparation, who we're asking to do it, starting with me. It isn't a giant mystery. To win in this league ... we did all the things that keep you from winning.”
He later identified a number of problem areas.
“I thought it was sloppy,” Payton said. “I don’t know how many balls we dropped. We’re jumping to catch passes we don’t need to jump to catch, we should be catching them in our hands. We fumbled the ball, interception. Defensively, our tackling was awful. They were almost near 300 yards rushing. It was awful. On top of that, you can’t make dumb mistakes like jump offside when a team is getting ready to punt or kick a field goal.”
“Those are things that are painfully obvious before you put the tape on. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind.”
Payton hit on a lot of the major errors that stood out to me.
Obviously you start with the turnovers on offense. But then there was a whole lot of nothing in the passing game after that. Jimmy Graham, Benjamin Watson, Josh Hill, Marques Colston and Pierre Thomas all appeared to drop passes. Several others were technically broken up, though they may have been caught with better throws or better effort.
On defense, there was virtually zero pass rush -- which was stunning against a young, inexperienced Panthers offensive line that had been getting beat up pretty good this year. The Saints sacked Cam Newton 13 times in three previous games, but they got zero sacks Sunday.
At one point, Newton fumbled the ball, picked it up and still ran for 9 yards.
I will say this -- Newton was outstanding early in the game, completing all five of his passes on the opening touchdown drive and looking sharper than I’ve seen him in at least two years. But the Saints made it easy on him as he threw for 226 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 83 yards and one touchdown.
Saints linebacker Curtis Lofton said a player like Newton forces you to be disciplined -- and the Saints weren’t.
“It’s bad football. We played bad football today,” Lofton said. “When you can’t stop the run, you miss tackles, you have turnovers, you jump offside on special teams, which is bad football, you get the outcome you get.”
When asked if he felt like anyone on defense quit in the second half, Lofton paused for a few seconds.
“You know, I can’t speak to anyone else. I was just trying to take care of my job,” Lofton said. “The film will say it all. If someone did quit, the film will say it.”
