Ahead of week 10, the Saints fired Dennis Allen as their head coach. And Darren Rizzi took up the job. He started with a bang, winning 2 games and ending a 7 games losing streak. But the week 16 drubbing against the Packers by 0-34, the first shutout of the 2024 season, left everyone stunned. Even the coach was speechless.

During the post-game conference, the Saints HC threw his locker room under the bus and said, “There’s a lot of guys that are playing for something, you know. But like I said, I have not witnessed one time we’ve made plenty of mistakes but effort wasn’t one of them so I’ve never felt like that.” That’s right. The defense could not do the man-to-man marking.

At the 3:40 mark in the first quarter, the Packers’ O-line gave enough free space to Jordan Love, who then passed to RB Josh Jacobs. Saints’ LB Pete Werner tried to stop him but slipped and Jacobs ended up covering 13 yards. That was one of their lapses. There was some fault in Darren Rizzi’s planning too.

The Saints rushing game failed as they only had 20 rushing plays for 67 yards. While the Packers recorded almost double plays for the thrice number of touchdowns, 39 plays for 188 yards. While talking about it, the HC added, “I think the way the game played out, we got we dug such a hole you know. I think we had a plan for Kendre (Miller) coming in. And we got into a lot of a two-minute drill and things like that. So, I think that’s why you saw you know more of Jordan Mims there. Because of just the way the game played out.”

There was a moment in the last minute before halftime, that no one could understand. It showed how unprepared the Saints were. It was tragic.

Rizzi fumbled with time management against the Packers

It was a 34-0 shutout. The Packers had taken the 21-0 lead at the 6:28 mark in the second quarter. So, it’s hard to believe that they could not score anything even in the second half. While talking about his clock management mistake, Darren Rizzi said, “If you go back and watch the play, both covering officials you know ruled the ball. The clock stopped. I had asked the official the covering official if the clock was going to remain stopped. I got a yes. And I turned back to talk to the offensive coaches and kind of talk about our plan there. Then you know they decided that he fumbled the ball forward and it just wasn’t communicated to me that clock had restarted. So, we lost some precious valuable time there.”

For those of you who don’t know, here’s what happened. On 3rd & 7 at 00:46 mark in the 2nd quarter, the Saints QB Spencer Rattler made a pass to the WR Kevin Austin. But the Packers CB Carrington Valentine grabbed the receiver, forcing a fumble. They had gained 17 yards on that drive, but the O-line didn’t gather back to take the advantage.

Instead, they wasted time around 20 seconds by taking the timeout. This also gave time to the Packers who further derailed the game by taking another timeout. With this, the chance to open their scoring also slipped out of their hands. There’s nothing we can do now. All they can take is some lessons to avoid such defeats.