Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images
By Ross Jackson
NEW ORLEANS, La. – Not much was expected from the New Orleans Saints in their 2025 season opener against the Arizona Cardinals. The team was the largest home underdog of the week and is managing a lot of changes from a busy offseason.
With that expectation, the Saints were a pleasantly surprising team to watch. They clawed and scrapping their way to a near game-tying possession on a well-executed two-minute drive made possible by a blocked field goal and third down sack on the previous defensive possessions.
There’s clearly a lot of build off for the team as it manages its transition. However, despite the team’s all-new gold jerseys, much of the issues that plagued the team throughout Sunday’s loss looked frustratingly familiar.
Penalties
In 2024, the Saints were right in the middle of the NFL in penalties, tied for No. 16 in the league with 110 accepted. However, they ranked No. 4 in penalty yardage surrendered (1,003).
The penalty trend unfortunately continued for New Orleans. The Saints’ 13 accepted penalties in Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals leads the NFL.
Per Pro Football Reference, teams in 2024 that had double-digit accepted penalties while their opponent did not were 27-40 (40.3% win rate) and in the last five years are just 85-114-1 (42.75%). While 10-plus penalties isn’t the end of a team’s chance to win, it almost certainly limits what their ceiling can be in a matchup, especially with a young roster.
New Orleans had three such games last year, in which the team went 1-2.
If the Saints want to win games like this hard-fought matchup, reducing penalties is a requirement. Safety Justin Reid echoed that sentiment after the game.
“We can’t fight against them and ourselves at the same time,” he said. “We eliminate the penalties, we play smart football, we’ll have a chance in any game we play.”
Third Down Defense
The Cardinals converted 46 percent (6/13) of their third down attempts including third and long attempts of 10, 11 and 12 yards that were converted through the air. The Cardinals also converted a third and nine because of a Saints defensive pass interference penalty on cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry.
New Orleans’s defense ranked No. 21 in the NFL last year in third down conversion rate, allowing 41.07 percent. There were 10 games in which the team allowed opponents to convert better than 40 percent of their third down attempts. New Orleans was 1-9 in those games.
Missed Tackles
Another area Reid highlighted postgame were missed tackles. New Orleans struggled mightily in this area last year. Unfortunately, with 10 missed tackles in Week 1, similar issues haunted the Saints even with a brand new defense and new personnel.
Reid took personal responsibility for missing a big tackle on a third down conversion. While he stressed his own personal accountability, the team’s tape review on Monday will reveal many more missed opportunities to bring drives to a halt, particularly early in the game.
Saints Need Cleaner Games For A Brighter Future
The defense did, however, perform well late, giving the team a chance to win. The offense almost cashed in after an efficient situational drive.
That shouldn’t be lost here.
New Orleans still possessed the ball in the red zone with three shots for a touchdown in an attempt to tie the game up or potentially go for the win with a two-point conversion. It’s hard though not to imagine what the game would have looked like had the Saints’ new look, new season and new approach not yielded so many of the same, costly results that have limited it in recent years.
These mistakes are fixable after just the first game of the season. Perhaps that is where the Saints can continue to separate themselves from their downtrodden recent past. They have a chance to improve where previous rosters could not.
“One game, we got 16 more,” Saints running back Alvin Kamara said after the game. “I think (Kellen Moore) said in the locker room, ‘The only thing that this game says is that we’re not going to be undefeated.’ Which, it is what it is, but we got to keep moving. We got another week.”
