Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
By Ross Jackson
After a brutal Week 3 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the New Orleans Saints now face their first test in rebounding from considerable adversity. New Orleans hung around in their first two matchups, losing by a single score in each and walking away with a sense of competitive pride.
This week, the team must learn how to progress and move forward without that sense of accomplishment. After a multi-score blowout, the Saints are about to reveal a lot about themselves with how they choose to respond.
After the loss, veteran tight end Juwan Johnson spoke about what he wants to see from his club moving forward and what his role is in ensuring a positive response.
The desired response? Courage in the face of adversity.
“Just be of courage,” Johnson said in the locker room following Sunday’s loss. “ I feel like that’s the biggest thing. Just be of courage. Love what you do. Come to work with the attitude that you want to just win.”
Johnson also felt after the game that a stronger focus on success in practice will lead to better opportunities on game days. He was one of a few players following the game to highlight practice habits as a potential concern for the team.
“We just try to win everything on Sunday,” he said. “We’re gonna lose like we’ve been doing. Thing is, we win days like we’ve been doing… Win days, eventually Sunday’s gonna be easy. We get our first one, and then we just keep stacking.”
Despite the struggling performance in Week 3, there’s a clear positive but urgent message from team leadership.
Accountability was a theme with head coach Kellen Moore, safety Justin Reid believes players and coaches will take harder looks at themselves rather than blaming one another and Johnson wants to use his voice to put the Saints towards more success by encouraging everyone to stay focused and keep their eyes on the road ahead.
“I wanted to be better at being more vocal,” he said.”Not putting guys down, but just letting guys know, ‘This is something that’s an area of focus for us we need to be better at.’ We can’t get down in the past few weeks. The biggest window on the car is in front, so we just have to keep looking forward and not looking behind us.”
The Saints will need to look back at least for this week in order to be able to address the issues that caused such a lopsided loss. But after that, there’s little doubt the front window of the car will have the team’s undivided attention as they try to put their showing in a 44-13 loss in Seattle behind them as quickly as possible.
