Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitts and Frank Schwab discuss how the Saints can regain their presence in the NFC and whether that will happen in 2024.
Video Transcript
When talking about the New Orleans Saints, the big question in my opinion is, who cares?
And I’m not saying this to attack Saints fans in the Saints organization.
I’m talking about when they had a Hall of Fame coach and a Hall of Fame quarterback and they had momentum and they had great inspirational stories and they had all these things that New Orleans had for a generation.
One day you wake up and realize that you’re not just a person, that you’re not a good person or a bad person.
As you pointed out while preparing for the show, the Saints had a winning record last year.
They’re not a bad football team.
They are on relevant football teams.
They don’t have that one person that all the fans listening to look at and think, “Hey, what is this guy doing?”
They don’t have a fantasy superstar.
They don’t have a head coach that people like. How many people know what Dennis Allen is like unless they’ve been around him?
Derek Carr, for example, is always very good, but he never sets the world on fire and delivers glory and greatness.
Similarly, the Saints are no longer in the conversation, but this exercise proves positively that there is nothing wrong with their team, nor is there anything good about them.
Their team is just there.
Yes, 100% that is true.
And some of their individual players follow suit, just like everyone wants to think Derek Carr was awful last season.
not much.
He was fine, that’s the thing.
He is fine.
The Saints were okay.
Chris Ara, he was fine.
It’s not like these men were awful or frightening.
However, I was not impressed or inspired at all. That’s certainly true.
Here, the fire is kind of in the middle of the road.
Will this Saints team ever win a Super Bowl?
No, absolutely not.
Unless we get incredibly lucky and a player like Rashid Shahid takes huge strides that we never expected, like becoming the next Justin Jefferson, that’s probably not going to happen.
And while the Saints will probably never be favorites to win the championship because of the way their team is constructed, they’re still strong enough to say they were ninth and eighth last year.
How can you tear that apart?
We have to challenge this sector.
It’s like a split.
YFC South are very bad and it’s hurting the Saints and they’re always going to be in the running for the title so to be honest they’re struggling.
right.
But that’s because the NFC South has been bad the last few years, and it could happen again unless the Falcons perform as well as we think they will or the Buccaneers make a really big step forward in AAA.
Last year they were also 9 and 8 years old.
So it’s like the Saints are telling themselves they’re better than they actually are, when we all know they’re not Super Bowl favorites.
And you’re right, they’re completely unrelated.
There are very few teams in the NFL where you might have tickets on Sunday but not watch the game unless you have a genuine interest in the opposing team, and the Saints are one of them.
They have absolutely no reason to change the channel.
You can’t have the Saints playing any other team on Sunday Night Football in the middle of the season, making it a matchup that when the schedule is released, people who aren’t fans of either team are like, “Oh my gosh, I gotta watch that game.”
That’s exactly what’s happening in New Orleans right now.
Yes, of course.
Again, definitely a middle ground.
It’s not bad.
We always talk about teams like, for example, the Patriots are going to win three games.
Nobody wants to see them.
The Saints will probably win eight or nine games.
Maybe they’ll go for 881, I mean, that’s how mediocre it is.
They have a real chance to win the division.
When they see them in the playoffs, they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s the Saints, I get it.’
If the Saints win the division, they will be treated the same way.
If the Jaguars and Titans win the division, they play on a Saturday afternoon, and we’re like, “Okay, yeah, we’ve got to play the Saints on a Saturday afternoon.”
That’s where they are.
And that’s — I’ll say it again, it’s shocking because a few years ago, this team was one of the teams to definitely watch in the NFL.
