Coming into Week 12, the New Orleans Saints had an opportunity to take advantage of a severely injured Atlanta Falcons, but that did not happen. Instead, the Saints lost embarrassingly, and for the first time this season, most of the blame was placed on HC Kellen Moore.
Was Kellen Moore’s Performance to Blame on Sunday?
It’s always hard to put most of the blame on one person for a loss in the NFL, but it was clear what was happening on Sunday.
Twice, kicker Blake Grupe, who should not have been on the roster going into this game, missed relatively easy field goals in today’s NFL. Yes, blame should be put on Grupe, but a kicker change should have happened weeks ago, so it is also Moore’s fault.
Keeping Grupe as the kicker was an apparent mistake, and today the Saints are trying out kickers, so they know this as well, but the missed FGs were not the only issue on Sunday.
The HC is Not Following Through With His Own Message
Since taking over the Saints HC job, Moore has preached the idea of growth and each person on this roster/staff working to improve. This is an understandable message given where the team currently is in a rebuild, but the HC himself needs to follow his own message. On Sunday, we saw the opposite.
Coming out of a bye week, self-scouting was a significant focus for the Saints, and improvement in certain areas was needed. This follows Moore’s message of growth, but instead of doing that, there was regression.
Against the Falcons, the Saints had many opportunities to score in the red zone, and they just needed to pick up a yard to get the touchdown. Red zone scoring has been an issue all season, and this was one of the areas Moore focused on during the bye week. Instead of fixing it, Moore seemed lost and had some extremely questionable play calls.
The other area of concern with Moore this whole season was a passiveness on fourth down. This team was 2-8 going into Sunday, so throwing caution to the wind is understandable. During the game, the Saints had two opportunities to go for it near midfield, but instead punted.
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Every area of concern with Moore this season was exposed against Atlanta, and after the game, he once addressed some of the issues, “Every opportunity you have, whether it be a self-scout or a game film, you’re going to evaluate it. There’s going to be things that come out of it positively and negatively. You just have to keep growing. Obviously, we missed this opportunity.”
Again, this is an understandable message from Moore, but the HC is an example to the people around him, and he needs to show growth in his own playcalling first.
