Unfortunately, the New Orleans Saints fell to 1-4 after Sunday's loss to Minnesota in the Caesars Superdome, the third loss in their three-game homestand.
Fortunately, perhaps — though not preferable — they've recently been down this road.
New Orleans was 1-4 last season, the first under second-year coach Kellen Moore, losing its first four games before finding victory lane, then dropped four more before winning five of the final eight to finish 6-11.
"I think our guys have the right mindset," Coach Kellen Moore said Monday. "This is the NFL, no week's going to be easy, we've unfortunately missed three opportunities. We have to respond the right way, which I know our guys will."
"I think it's one of those things we've just got to continue to believe in the system," safety Julian Blackmon said. "Every team goes through waves. I think we all understand that every team has ups and downs. We've been through it before, it's just a matter of what we can do this week."
This week, the attempt to steady the waves will take the Saints to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., for Sunday's game against the Giants (3-1-1), before they travel to Paris to face Pittsburgh on Oct. 25.
Players said closing ranks will be one of the best ways to help sort out solutions right now.
"We've got to lean on each other because at this point, you have a lot of naysayers, a lot of outside noise," said Blackmon, who had five tackles in the 23-13 loss to the Vikings. "You've got to just get to the point where we just trust in each other, trust in our coaches and focus on the details, one day at a time."
Running back Kendre Miller, who ran for 30 yards and a touchdown on 10 carries, agreed.
"The outside noise is really the biggest thing," Miller said. "You've got everybody telling you you're sorry and that's when you've got to come closer as a team and get out of this hole and start putting these games together and start winning. Because if we go on and win four or whatever in a row, everybody's gonna be talking about they were in a slump but they came out of it. All the negatives will be gone. We've just got to clean up the little stuff that we're doing and just keep balling."
New Orleans' offense will benefit from a clean-up. After averaging 27 points per game in the first three, the Saints averaged 18.5 points and 231 yards in the last two, while committing three turnovers (another turnover was a fumbled kickoff return).
"I feel like (Sunday), definitely we were shooting ourselves in the foot," Miller said. "They blitzed us almost every play, so we're shooting ourselves in the foot — holding call or something. You're back five yards, they're going to blitz regardless so that makes it hard, you've got to get the ball out quicker and now we're behind the sticks. A team like that, you've just got to play a clean game against them.
"It's not like we're lacking talent. I feel like it's just simple mistakes that we're putting on ourselves. We've just got to be more detailed and focused in practice and just go out there and clean it up."
Blackmon said the silver lining has been that the Saints have been competitive in four games; three were decided by one score.
"There's been a lot of games where it's like, if we would have just had one more possession, we would have won," he said. "It comes down to the details; we've played good but not good enough to win.
"One of these games it's going to all come together, we're looking to get on a streak."
Finding that road will get the Saints off one they've already traveled.
"We've just got to focus on the task at hand and getting better," Moore said. "I think there's some stuff in this film that you can still recognize there's some good. I thought the turnover in the red zone leading to a long drive on offense, I thought that was really good complementary football there. I thought we had some physicality in the run game from a defense perspective and an offense perspective, just weren't able to sustain it.
"There's some lessons to learn from this game but this is the NFL. You've just got to keep moving and get better, and these things can turn any which way in the NFL. Plenty of evidence to that."
