The good, the bad, and the ugly from Week 4

Injuries played a major role in this game for the Saints defense. It wasn’t enough that they had to play without Demario Davis at linebacker. His replacement Willie Gay Jr. exited with a hand injury. Then Tyrann Mathieu went down at safety and had to be pulled from the game; special teams ace J.T. Gray had to play an uncomfortable number of snaps in his stead. And on offense, Taysom Hill left the game with an abdomen injury after scoring a pair of early touchdown runs. That’s after the offensive line was whittled down without Erik McCoy and Cesar Ruiz in the lineup.

This was an ugly game by Derek Carr. He was off-target on several throws and put the ball in harm’s way far too often. If the Saints are going to try to be a run-first offense with low passing volume, he needs to be more efficient and quickly get the ball out where his receivers can catch it cleanly. Pressure was a problem but he just made too many poor decisions.

Ultimately this game was just too similar to too many others we’ve seen from Dennis Allen’s teams. This is who they are: a team with great talent but major underlying flaws, who can’t hold onto a record over .500. At some point they’re going to have to acknowledge this pattern and make even bigger changes than what we saw this offseason. They’ve peaked.