One of the perks of playing on Thursday nights is the mini-bye week teams get to help recover from that disruption to their schedule, and it’s come at a great time for the New Orleans Saints. They’re reeling after a 2-5 start to the season with injuries hitting the starting lineup hard on offense, but with a lot of regression on defense. Coaches have had extra time to study the tape and evaluate the squad, and players have had extra time to rest up and recover. Hopefully that all makes a difference.
Dennis Allen’s squad needs all the help it can get. His history isn’t exactly inspiring — Allen started out 3-4 in each of his first two years with the Raiders as head coach, only to go 1-8 down the stretch in both seasons, twice losing six games in a row. He was dismissed after an 0-4 start in his third year on the job. He’s failed to even match his best performances with awful Raiders rosters on a Saints team everyone said was set up perfectly to compete right away. Can he turn it around this time? Or is this just who he is?
With all of that in mind, here are our game-by-game predictions for the 10 games remaining on their schedule: