NFL 2024 season - New Orleans Saints team preview

Yahoo Sports' Jason Fitz and Frank Schwab discuss how the Saints can get back to relevancy in the NFC and whether that will happen in 2024.

Video Transcript

And in my mind when you talk about the New Orleans Saints, the one big thing is who cares?

And I'm not saying this to attack Saints fans of the Saints organization.

I'm saying that when you have had a Hall of Fame coach and a hall of Fame quarterback and all of the momentum and the great stories in the feel goods and all of these things that New Orleans had for a generation.

You wake up one day and you realize that post that you're not just, it's not that you're good or bad.

The Saints as you pointed out when we were getting ready for the show, the Saints had a winning record last year.

They're not a bad football team.

They're in a relevant football team.

They don't have somebody that every fan listening will just lo to, to find out, hey, what's this guy doing?

They don't have the fantasy superstar.

They don't have the head coach that people like how many people even know what Dennis Allen looks like unless you've been around Dennis Allen, right?

Like they've got Derek Carr who's always very good, but never really fires up the world to get into the spot of being glorious and great.

Like the, the Saints are no longer a conversation piece and this exercise is proved positive that because it's not that there's anything wrong with their team or anything right with their team.

Their team is just sort of there.

Yeah, totally 100%.

And even with some of their individual guys follow that, like, everybody likes to think that Derek Carr was terrible last season.

Not really.

He, he was fine and that's the thing.

He's fine.

The Saints were fine.

Chris Ala, he was fine.

Like he's not like these guys were awful or terrible.

They just, it's just so unimpressive and uninspiring and yes, you're right.

It's fires being just kind of stuck in the middle of the road here.

You can this Saints group ever win a Super Bowl.

No, absolutely not.

Like, unless you just get some crazy fortunate breaks that have a bunch of breakthroughs we don't see coming from guys like Rashid Shaheed becomes like the next Justin Jefferson or something like it, but that's probably not gonna happen.

And the Saints, he probably is never going to be a contender as constructed, but yet they're good enough where you can be like, hey, we're nine and eight last year.

How could you just tear that apart?

We got to make a run at this, the division.

It almost like it's the division.

YFC South is so bad that it's hurting the Saints and being honest with themselves because they're always in contention.

Right.

But that's just because the NFC South has been so bad the last couple of years it might be again if the Falcons thing doesn't work out as well as we think, or, you know, Buccaneers, unless they take AAA real big step forward.

They were just nine and eight last year too.

So it's almost like the, the Saints talk themselves into being better than they are when we all know they're not a super bowl contender.

And you're right, they're just, they're irrelevant.

There's only a few teams in the NFL where if you have Sunday ticket, you're just never turning on that game unless you're really into, into the opponent and the Saints are one of them.

There's just really no reason to flip the channel to them.

I can't put the Saints against anybody in the middle of the season on Sunday night football in a way that when the schedule was released was gonna make non fans of either team say, oh my God, I have to watch that game.

That's just where New Orleans is now.

Yeah, absolutely.

Positively middle of the road again.

They're not bad.

Like we usually talk this way about teams like, uh, the, the Patriots are gonna win three games.

Nobody wants to watch them.

The Saints are probably gonna win eight or nine games.

Maybe they'll go 881, you know, I mean, that's the, that's how mediocre.

They are a real shot at winning the division.

You can see them in the playoffs and they'd be like, oh, the Saints, ok.

The Saints are gonna be treated if they win their division, they'll be treated the same way.

The Jags and Titans do when they win their division, they, they'll get the Saturday afternoon game and we're like, all right, well, we're stuck with the Saints on Saturday afternoon.

That's where they are.

And that's, it's, again, it's just shocking because a few years ago that was one of the must watch teams in the NFL.