Searching for the right words to describe his team’s 2-2 start, Alvin Kamara paused to think.
First, he rubbed his mouth. Next, he stroked his chin. Then, when he finally figured out what he wanted to say, the New Orleans Saints running back pointed to his experience.
“When you play a lot of football in this league, you realize that blowing people out and doing all that, that s-- don't matter,” Kamara said after Sunday’s 26-24 loss to the Atlanta Falcons. “That’s fanfare. That’s cool. You don’t get no points for that. These types of games? These are the type of games that matter. The ones that you close out when it’s nail biting, one score, these the type of games that matter.
“These are the games that winning teams win.”
Kamara’s sentiment has become a common refrain for the Saints under coach Dennis Allen. Like last year, the Saints are .500 after beginning the season 2-0. And like last year, their two losses have come in frustrating, if not brutal, fashion. They are the kinds of defeats that are usually cited later by teams that don’t make the postseason.
It was supposed to be different.
The Saints’ explosive start to the season had people buying into the team in a way that last year’s 2-0 record did not. New Orleans gained national attention for its offensive outbreak, and local fans jumped on the bandwagon. And there was hope that the Saints’ offense was sustainable. Sure, they weren’t going to blow out teams every week. But a high-powered run game — and the addition of offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak — had people thinking the Saints were for real.
In the long run, the Saints still might be a team that can make noise. There’s a lot of season left to be played, and the underlying statistics have the Saints as a top 10 team both offensively and defensively.
But in the meantime, nothing can ruin the mood like feelings of deja vu setting in.
“It feels like every close game, every big-time game, we’re just not winning,” wide receiver Chris Olave said. “So I’m tired of hearing we’ve got a good team. We’ve got to find a way.”
Derek Carr said that going through what the Saints last year did is “a benefit.” By winning four of the last five games, the quarterback said his team recognizes the mindset it will take to rally and not let the season get out of hand. Though that rally didn’t result in a playoff berth, Carr said he believes the Saints are in a “much better place” than they were at this point last year.
In one sense, he’s right. The Saints have a plus-57 point differential, an improvement over 2023’s minus-14 through four games. Last year at this time, Carr was dealing with a shoulder injury that would bother him for the rest of the season. As tough as the Saints’ two losses have been this year, at least Carr is healthy.
But the tough part about this set of circumstances for the Saints is the schedule does not provide any favors. On deck is a Monday Night Football showdown with the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs — a decidedly tougher matchup than Week 5 last year, when the Saints shut out the New England Patriots. Then, the Saints host the first-place Tampa Bay Buccaneers — who lit up an Eagles defense that shut down New Orleans in Week 3 — before former coach Sean Payton comes to town for another prime-time affair with the Denver Broncos.
Allen’s Saints and Payton’s Broncos, coincidentally, have the same record at 2-2 — even though the Saints have looked like the much better team.
“We’ve been pretty good at getting off to a fast start in terms of to the season; we’ve got to do a better job of keeping that momentum going,” Allen said Sept. 6, just days before the team’s opener.
Three years in, Allen’s squad has again squandered that momentum.
"We don’t want to be at that point where we say, ‘Oh I wish we had this game back,’” linebacker Pete Werner said. “We’re 2-2 right now, but we’ve got a long season. We don’t want to be making those comments at the end of the season.”