Are we starting to sound like a broken record? The New Orleans Saints are going into Week 17’s game with the Philadelphia Eagles with their season on the line. If they lose this matchup, they’ll be eliminated from playoff contention. They won’t have any shot at securing the NFC South division title and the playoff seed that comes with it. They’ll also be mathematically eliminated from the hunt for a wild-card seed. Week 18’s regular season finale with the Carolina Panthers suddenly becomes meaningless.
So what are their paths forward? Options are dwindling rapidly, but that’s what a 6-9 record will do for you. The Saints must defeat or tie the Eagles on Sunday to advance. Either result keeps them in the mix for both the division title and a playoff spot, but they’ll need some help to go the distance. And obviously a win in Philly would be the preference. Things get extremely dicey with a draw.
Six different teams have a better record than the Saints right now, and the surging Panthers own a tiebreaker over New Orleans with a shot at the season-sweep in Week 18 (which would punch their own playoff ticket if they beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this week). Tying the Eagles would put them up at 6-9-1, still behind 7-win teams like the Buccaneers, Washington Commanders, Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions, and the Green Bay Packers, plus the 8-6-1 New York Giants. The Saints would need multiple teams in that group to lose out the rest of the way to stay alive in the wild-card race, and for all of them to lose at least one game down the stretch.
So that’s what we’re left with: win and advance. A tied game this Sunday only brings, well, false hope, to be blunt. And a loss means this season was all for nothing. That would be a painful reality check for a Saints team that went all-in on this season by trading their top draft choice and kicking a lot of money down the road against the salary cap. Hopefully they can somehow look back and say it was worth it.
