The Caesars Superdome used to be a place opposing teams dreaded to visit. The fast-paced New Orleans Saints offense was tough to slow down on their turf in front of their loud fans and under their bright lights. Unfortunately, things aren’t what they used to be.
Including the playoffs, the Saints won 8 home games in a row in 2017 and 7 consecutive in 2018. They were undefeated at home in 2012, winning all 9 games at the Caesars Superdome (again, including the playoffs). That dominance built a perception that the Superdome crowd was too much for visiting teams to handle — too loud, too disruptive, and too raucous to ignore.
But things have changed for the worse, and while a lot of it can be blamed on the onfield product, some things are out of your hands. Since the 17-game regular season was introduced back in 2021, the Saints have only played a full nine-game home slate once, in 2024 (and they went 3-6). They have twice had to move home games out of Louisiana. Hurricane Ida’s impacts forced them to relocate to the Jacksonville Jaguars’ TIAA Bank Stadium for Week 1 in 2021 and a 2022 home game with the Minnesota Vikings was moved overseas to London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Because of that, the Saints have played the fewest games in front of their home crowd since 2021: 32, winning 14 of them and losing 18 times. When you aren’t playing at as often and losing more often than not, fan enthusiasm is going to slow down.
Only seven teams have won fewer than 14 real home games since 2021, not counting International Series games, emergency relocations, and forfeitures:
- New England Patriots (11-22).
- Carolina Panthers (11-22)
- Arizona Cardinals (12-21)
- New York Jets (13-21)
- New York Giants (13-20-1)
- Houston Texans (13-20-1)
- Chicago Bears (13-20)
That isn’t the kind of company you want to be in, and it’s on Moore and his crew to fix it. No one should be under the illusion that things will change overnight and the Saints will get right back into the playoff picture. Those just aren’t fair expectations for a first-year head coach, much less one leading a team that hasn’t won even half of its home games the last four years.
So when will things turn around? There are just too many unknowns to say for sure. We don’t know if this experiment is going to work. We don’t even know how many home games the Saints will have the next couple of years. They’re going to host eight games at the Superdome in 2025, and they’re in line for nine of them in 2026, but the hot rumor is they’ll be playing a game in France that season. Because the Saints own exclusive marketing rights in France, that would likely be a “home” game for them.
It’s been previously reported that teams would only lose one home game to an International Series matchup every eight years, but it was also said that these games would always be AFC-versus-NFC affairs, and that hasn’t been the case. So those rules can change when it suits the NFL. Hopefully Moore has the Saints winning so often by 2026 that we don’t notice, if this all comes to fruition after all.