Week 4’s loss to the New York Giants has to be tough for the New Orleans Saints to accept. Their defense fell apart at the seams against a Daniel Jones, who went into the game having never thrown for 300-plus yards since Jason Garrett was hired as his play caller; Jones finished the day with 402 passing yards, including a pair of touchdown passes.
Things haven’t gone well for teams who have lost to the Giants lately. New York only won six games last season (twice beating Washington), and of those opponents just one finished the year with a winning record — the 12-4 Seattle Seahawks, who got bounced out of the playoffs in the wild-card round. The other four teams to lose to Big Blue in 2020 finished a combined 21-41-2.
This trend stretches on into 2019, when New York won just four games (again twice against Washington). None of their opponents ended with a winning record and they finished with a cumulative 15-33 record. The Giants have played a lot of bad football in recent years. They went into this game without a win for good reasons. Losing to them yourself says a lot of ugly things about your team and where it’s headed.
Of course there’s time for the Saints to defy this and turn things around. Their plan remains the same: heal up and get a handful of starters back from various reserve lists (wide receivers Tre’Quan Smith and Michael Thomas, defensive linemen David Onyemata and Marcus Davenport, linebacker Kwon Alexander, kicker Wil Lutz) around the bye week, then go on a tear. Maybe it’s a good sign that the Saints have a game with that same sorry Washington team scheduled up next.
It’s a pretty vision. Let’s hope it doesn’t become too clouded with another loss on the books.
