What is going on in New Orleans?

After five weeks, the New Orleans Saints looked like one of two dominant forces in the NFC. They were 4-1, with the one loss coming to the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field, in a 42-34 shootout. Basically, the Saints would have been 5-0 if they had played anyone other than the Packers in Week 1.

After winning four games in a row, though, the Saints went to Tampa Bay and lost a head-scratcher to the Bunccaneers (who had just been dismantled 48-3 the week before in San Francisco). "Chalk it up to just one of those bad days that you occasionally get in the NFL," I thought. Then the Saints went and put up the most points since the merger in embarrassing the Colts 62-7. "Right, last week was just a hiccup," I thought. Now in week seven, New Orleans produced the most eyebrow-raising result of all: a 31-21 loss to previously winless Saint Louis (and the Saints' final score came in garbage time, when the game was over). After looking like one of the teams to beat in the NFC through five weeks, the Saints look more like an also-ran after eight. They are still likely to make the playoffs, but with their inability to win on the road, they wouldn't figure to be contenders when January rolls around.

So what the hell is going on with those guys? Clearly there is a big difference between home and road games for New Orleans right now. The Saints' two road wins came against Jacksonville and Carolina, and they have enjoyed three excellent offensive performances at home, putting 30 points on Chicago, 40 on Houston and the aforementioned 62 on Indy.

Right now, the Saints have two major problems. The first is Drew Brees' play recently. Over the last 5 weeks, Brees has thrown an interception in four games (the exception being vs. Indy) and three of those were multi-interception games. The Saints are always going to be relying on their offense to win games for them, because it is so explosive. Their defense is by no means bad, but it is typically not going to be good enough to win them games, especially when Brees is providing the opponents with short fields due to turnovers. So long as Brees is turning it over, the Saints will continue to struggle.

The other problem is with the Saints run-defense. Over the same stretch of five games, the Saints have allowed three 100-yard rushers. The two exceptions: the Indy abomination (of course) and when they played at Jacksonville and Maurice Jones-Drew averaged almost eight yards per carry but only carried the ball 11 times for reasons that will probably never be known. What other teams were doing is unimportant, though. The fact remains that the Saints have had a lot of trouble stopping the run. This is bad for the obvious reason that not being able to stop the run is bad, and also because teams effectively running the ball is going to keep the New Orleans offense off the field for longer, giving them bigger problems.

Whatever is going on in New Orleans, they've got to put a stop to it soon. The Falcons appear to have hit their stride somewhat and are playing better football, and the Buccaneers already have a tiebreak advantage on the Saints. They'll have to play much better football if they plan on winning the NFC South this year.