Don’t look now, but the New Orleans Saints only need a couple of highly specific scenarios to play out before they’re on top of the NFC South. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers lost to the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday night in a stinker, falling short 27-22 in front of a sold-out home crowd.
If the Saints take care of business against the visiting Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday and the Atlanta Falcons fall to the Carolina Panthers (who upset the Bucs last week), it puts New Orleans in a complicated tie with Tampa Bay and Carolina for No. 1 in the division to start November. Now who saw that coming?
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Here’s the updated NFC South standings after Thursday night’s Buccaneers loss, going into Sunday’s slate of games:
- 3-4 Atlanta Falcons
- 3-5 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- 2-5 Carolina Panthers
- 2-5 New Orleans Saints
And, this can’t be stressed enough, we’re really putting the cart before the horse here. The Saints must end this losing streak and defeat the Raiders to keep their hopes alive. So much is riding on it, including Dennis Allen’s future as head coach. New Orleans has a lot of patience, but it’s really hard to give him much grace if he starts out 2-6 after the summer was spent talking up how perfectly his team was set up to compete. If that talk is going to dissipate, finding a much-needed win against Allen’s old team would be one strong way to do it.
