After winning their first two games in impressive fashion, the Saints have dropped their last two by giving up late fourth-quarter leads.
Sunday’s 26-24 loss to the division-rival Falcons was plenty disappointing for New Orleans quarterback Derek Carr.
“It hurts,” Carr said in his postgame press conference. “You try your best not to be so angry about it, but you hate losing. You hate losing, especially close ones. They just stink. I thought positively, we ran the ball, we threw it effectively. Compared to last week, I thought we got better, but just like Debo [Paulson Adebo] said, it’s not good enough. We got to do better, and obviously, it wasn’t enough to get a win today.”
Carr and the Saints took a 24-23 lead with Alvin Kamara’s 1-yard touchdown run with a minute left in the fourth quarter. But a defensive pass interference penalty put the Falcons in position for a game-winning 58-yard field goal.
Last year, the Saints also started out 2-0 before dropping a pair of games to fall to 2-2. The club was up and down for the rest of the season, though they did win four of their last five to finish 9-8 — just missing out on the postseason.
But Carr doesn’t think 2024 will be a complete reflection of 2023.
“I’ll say that just as a team, we’re just in such a much better place than last year,” Carr said. “Last year, everything was new, and we’re all figuring each other out. This year, we know who we are, and we know what we’ve earned. We’ve earned 2-2. That’s what we’ve earned. It’s not good enough. Not good enough in our organization to be .500. That’s never the standard for us, and that will never be acceptable as leaders. That’s just not acceptable here.
“We hold that standard, but at the same time, there’s no pointing fingers. It’s all people pointing their thumb at themselves saying, ‘I will do that better, I will do that better, I’ll do that better, and we’re going to be better.’ We’ve been here. We know the mindset and the work it takes. We know that it doesn’t get easier as you go forward. Having that experience to go off of last year is a benefit, honestly, because we’re going to rally together. I know one thing, our team’s going to get tighter, and we’re going to be more unified going forward, even more so than today. We’ll keep going and hopefully build on getting a win, get back in the win column.”
The Saints will be on the road again to play the Chiefs on Monday night in Week 5.