This isn’t how you play a winning brand of football. The New Orleans Saints ended their opening drive against the Carolina Panthers with a missed field goal from the 29-yard line — alone, that’s a bad thing (especially for rookie kicker Blake Grupe, who is now the only specialist in the NFL with multiple misses inside 30 yards), but in the big picture it’s part of a concerning trend.
It meant the Saints offense extended its opening-drive touchdowns drought to 13 consecutive games. Like every team, the Saints scrip their first 12 to 15 plays each week to test the opponent’s vulnerabilities and gauge how the defense will react to what they’re being shown. These are often your staple plays that can reliably pick up yards and, hopefully, put points on the scoreboard.
But the Saints haven’t scored a single touchdown during their opening drives with Derek Carr at quarterback. Look at the results through 13 games, as noted by ESPN’s Katherine Terrell:
- Week 1: Successful field goal
- Week 2: Punt
- Week 3: Punt
- Week 4: Missed field goal
- Week 5: Punt
- Week 6: Missed field goal
- Week 7: Missed field goal
- Week 8: Punt
- Week 9: Punt
- Week 10: Punt
- Week 12: Punt
- Week 13: Interception
- Week 14: Missed field goal
That’s discouraging. It’s downright dispiriting that this same play caller, Pete Carmichael, organized touchdown-scoring drives on his first possession in three of the last four games last year with Andy Dalton at quarterback. The receiving corps and offensive line are near-identical to what the Saints finished the season with. So why are they regressing? Carr has a lot of work to do to prove the critics who said the Saints were making a lateral move wrong.
