Preseason Predictions on the Record

Here are my preseason predictions on the record, with my rationale. I exactly predicted our 2022 7-10 record. For 2023 by final preseason prediction was 8-9 several days before the opening game. Judge my qualifications to criticize Mickey Loomis by these:

09/04/2023 (6 days before Game 1, prediction 8-9 record):

https://blackandgold.com/saints/102759-predict-saints-record-year-2023-a-7.html#post978670

So, I am updating my projection now that our offseason is complete to 8-9. Overall, I think we had a better offseason than in 2022. We didn't make a big trade up in the draft. We recovered value for Payton. We made at least some of our draft picks at positions of need. We got some value free agents. But we did lose some talent due to our salary cap situation. Preseason looked decent. We did not suffer injuries to key starters. We didn't trade Shaheed to the Eagles for a 5th. Carr looked good. We seem to have depth issues but our rivals in Carolina may have some oline issues.

I still feel Carr is a big risk. There are cases of QBs reaching new heights on their second team like Brees (though he was much younger) or Stafford. But there are a number of QBs who have gone to a second team with high expectations and proved mediocre (Drew Bledsoe, Jim Everett, Carson Palmer), not the answer (Brett Favre, Joe Montana), or disasters (Donovan McNabb, Duante Culpepper, Russell Wilson, Matt Ryan, Dalton after Cincy). Its easy to think Carr is so different and that can't happen again. But remember all the hype last year on Russell Wilson? Remember how many forum members cheered when Matt Ryan was traded away from the Falcons to finally not have to face him and how broadcasters looked at Matt Ryan's stats and said this guy can play into his 40's and challenge some of Brees and Brady's records? Remember all the hope last year for how Winston was finally back? We did shut out Derek Carr last season, when he had Davante Adams, who was supposed to be the missing piece who made him a star. A fresh start for QB's does not always work, even though it often always involves 'something' they didnt have before, which in this case is a good defense. But Russell Wilson had a good defense last year, didn't do much. And Carr is going from playing for a string of offensive gurus, including his best season under John Gruden, to playing for Dennis Allen. Also, a string of QBs like Brady, Brees, Manning, and Favre spoiled us to the concept that good QBs can play at an elite level until age 40+ but that may be more of a historic anomaly and QBs slowing down in their early 30's can be common too. It may be a telling stat that in his limited time at QB for the Raiders last year, Jared Stidham had a slightly higher QB rating than Derek Carr. If Carr was really struggling only due to the Raiders being a train wreck, one might have expected Stidham to implode and set interception records in the games he was handed the reigns, but thats not what happened. Maybe Carr just needed a change of scenery and is elite but many he is who he is with a slow decline or maybe this change of scenery is his last gasp of desperation and his healthy and/or talent falls apart.

I also see a big and overlapping risk in coach Dennis Allen. He was Mr. 4-12 in Oakland and finished 7-10 his first season here. I have a hard time betting big on a double reclamation of a head coach who averaged about 5 wins a year and a QB who averaged about 7 wins a year teaming up to win '12 games minimum.' Maybe Dennis Allen finally puts it all together and fields a winner in his 5th season as a head coach, or maybe he is who he is and winning 5 games +/- a few is what he is capable of, or maybe this is his last gasp of desperation and reuniting Dennis Allen and Derek Carr works about as well as reuniting Derek Carr and Davante Adams and the wheels fall off.

Ours starters look pretty good, but our depth is questionable. Our seconds units got outplayed. For two years in a row we have been among the most injured teams and I don't think that is just chance. It has to do with evaluation, conditioning, and roster management. We brought back many chronically injured players like Thomas and Peat. We no longer have Armstead and Landry so thats good. And unlike least offseason we didn't completely raid the thrift store on aging/injury/suspension risk players like Landry, Maye, and Mathieu. But at the same time many of our aging starters like Peat, Thomas, Jordan, Davis, Mathieu, Hill, Kamara, and Maye are a year older and many have an additional injury in their stack of xrays. Many other teams pre-emptively cut a player when the injuries start stacking up even if that player still shows talent, but we have restructured all our contracts so many players are uncuttable due to the cap hit, so the injury risk remains. I expect we will continue to have a lot of injuries until we make more changes with our lousy doctors and gain the cap flexibility to cut players like Peat and Thomas. I expect Thomas will get injured again this year at some point even if he is healthy today, its just very unlikely to miss 40 of 50 games and return to reliable quality production. Its a bad bet. But the biggest risk is the oline where we have minimal depth and most of our starters have injury issues. But don't worry, we draft our oline for their flexibility, so when one starter gets injured, another will slide over, and instead of having new starters at one position we will change our starters at 2 positions, and then be absolutely shocked when a QB or RB goes down next.

From what I can tell, even though we got younger, we are one of the oldest rosters in the NFL by any lists I can find. We also seem to have a lot of older starters, though I cannot find a list by age of starters.

I think there is some risk to our defense with changing coordinators despite a successful run in 2022. It seemed like a mistake to use co-coordinators last year and then this offseason we lost both because we would not commit to either. While its easy to assume our defense will remain top tier, I don't think we can totally be sure when our best defensive players are getting older for their positions and we changed coordinators and our head coach, though a defensive guru, is struggling with how to be an effective head coach and could take his eye off the ball on defense.

The refs are still an issue. The refs consider the 'the no call' to be the worst offenses against their profession in the history of the game by our fans daring to put so much blame on their incredibly challenging profession. Ever since the no call, the refs have done everything they can to keep us out of contention, but last year we kept ourselves out so they didn't have to work quite as hard at it, but still showed bias. At a minimum, the refs are likely to cost us a couple of games, but on the off chance everything goes right and we are a top NFC contender, its likely they will kick into high gear and cost us more. It's possible that voting with Goodell on Thursday Night flexing and extra Thursday Night games will cause Goodell to put in a good word for us with the refs, but I think its more personal than that, and I am not convinced we can have a great record with the refs working against us unless we have a truly dominant team, which I don't see us having with a retreat QB, long time losing coach, and a roster compromised by refusing to rebuild and being unable to keep all our young talent or pursue marquee pro-bowl type free agents (no matter how much money we gave Carr, most don't view him as a top 10 QB).

Our division is weak. Our schedule is weak. But we were 7-10 last year and we added a QB who my median expectation is Bills Drew Bledsoe but with the stats of this passing era in the NFL. So I don't think we are super strong either. So I expect a lot of close games that could go either way, with the refs putting a foot on the scale. I can't look at our schedule and point to 4 games we 'shouldn't' or 'can't' win but I can't point to 4 games we 'can't lose' or that a fan of the other team couldn't mark down that they 'should' win against the 7-10 Saints and their retread Raiders QB. I don't think anyone in our division is poised to dominate and take the division by storm, but this is a division that likely is won with 7-10 wins, and I think all 4 teams could do that, with the Bucs being the least likely. Yes, Carolina's oline looked weak in preseason, but it was fine last year, and they have the #1 pick at QB. The Falcons are a young team and have more players who could take the next step, along with a good oline that can run the ball and a QB who is careful to avoid turnovers. The Bucs are rebuilding, but a few years ago Mayfield was just as good as Carr and younger, and its also not unprecedented for a young QB to have ups and downs, and he has the arm to air it out to his quality receivers. The Bucs could be horrible, they could be 0-17, but they could also beat us, as Baker Mayfield did last year.

Outside our division we play a lot of toss up games against ok teams that could be 50/50 to beat us. Will we be able to stop Richardson and Fields or will they run for a TD on 3rd on 20? Last year we never beat a team with an established QB who was their teams started from 2021 through the end of 2022, while we usually beat teams with less stable QB situations. By that measure we could fair well against Young, Stroud, and Richardson but we would lose against Tannehill, Mac Jones, Lawrence, Fields, Cousins, Ridder twice, Goff, D Jones and Stafford. That would be 10 losses but last year we had one seemingly established QB we played in Carr who actually had his job on the line and was benched by the end of the year, and certainly a few of these guys could end up in the boat or be injured and we never play them. Then again we also lost to a couple unestablished QBs last year, Mayfield and PJ Walker come to mind. I just see our whole schedule as a bunch of toss ups against mostly teams with similar questions to ours, many with some new hope at QB like three with top 4 picks at QB, several with young QBs they hope are the answer who have shown encouraging signs of development like Love, Fields, and Ridder, and some hoping their QBs are finally living up to the promise of their draft status despite past inconsistency like Lawrence after a rough rookie year, Goff after all his ups and downs, and D Jones after taking a step forward last year. QBs like Mayfield, Tannehill, and Mac Jones are at lower points in their careers than Derek Carr, but give any of them one good season and they are seen as a mid-level starter like Carr is now, or give Carr one bad season and he is seen as in danger of becoming a journeyman like they are. Unfortunately, we don't play Arizona this year. Fortunately we don't play SF or Philadelphia (with Hurts) or any of the AFC Elite that would probably smash us all. But what that leads to is having to predict the results of a .500-ish caliber team against 17 .500-ish caliber opponents, those over which that finished much worse than .500 last year having top-4 pick rookie QBs. Its like 17 coin flips. We have an edge at QB experience over many and play in a weak division, but our coach has a career .283 winning percentage, we have a history of injuries and doctor misdiagnoses (would anyone be surprised if Shaheed comes back, plays 2 games, misses the rest, and we later find out the doctors missed an ACL and he was playing on it torn?), and the refs hate us.

So overall, I feel this is an incredibly hard season to predict, but 8-9 feels reasonable to me. I see a wide variety of possibilities and I would not be shocked if the wheels fall off with injuries and Carr and Allen's confidence and we go 4-13 or if everything goes right and we go 11-6. I just can't see us making noise in the playoffs and challenging the best teams. The AFC teams with elite young QBs Mahomes, Burrow, and J Allen are the class of the NFL right now. I can't imagine us competing with them. To do that we would have to beat NFC teams like the Eagles and 49ers which I can't see happening unless they are all missing their QBs. And somehow, if we make the playoffs due to our weak division, we go into the playoffs having never faced one of these 5 elite teams in the regular season. The easy schedule sounds like a blessing, but if we get to the playoffs its a curse, we get there like TCU in the national championship bragging about a possible signature win against the Lions or Vikings. So, with my reason and logic, I don't see this as our year. I wish we didn't sign Carr. I wish we took the cap hits to rebuild and get rid of injury prone players. I don't think this would have prevented us from winning the divison or being exciting to watch, maybe it would be a little less likely but its still a toss up. Honestly, a team with Haener at QB or if we traded for Love or Tyler Huntley or picked up Zappe on waivers we could win this division and make a token playoff appearance too.

Last year I was exactly right predicting 7-10. I know this is negative but at least I am putting my cards on the table. 8-9, thats my call. We will see. I will root for us. This is just how I see it. 

Some earlier context from my posts previously in the 22-23 offseason:

In the past 3 years Michael Thomas has played 10 of 50 possible games or 20%. Over his career Zion Williamson has played 28.5 games per season out of 82 possible or 35%, even higher if you only count the last 3 seasons since he only played 24 games his rookie year. It’s great that Michael Thomas was healthy early in his career but for the last 3 years his percentage availability has been much less than even Zion. Since Zion‘s availability has been almost double, I can’t escape that its much more likely Zion plays a full season than Thomas next year, though neither is likely. As far as body of work, its clear both are elite when healthy.

I am curious if those who blame the 2022 Saints season on injuries nobody could have predicted that won’t happen again in 2023 also expect a healthy Pelicans team to be undefeated / win the west in 2023-2024? To me and I think many other fans who have gotten too downtrodden to still post, the situations with Michael Thomas and Zion Williamson are very similar, except Williamson is a bit younger and has played a bit higher percentage of games the last 3 years. I am hoping that the mirror situation with the Pelicans will force a reset sooner with the Saints, because whatever patience the new orleans fan community had with unlikely recoveries has surely been tested on two fronts this year.

I predicted our exact record last year.

Carr is not even a definite upgrade at QB. Statistically he was worse than Dalton last year. He profiles as a Drew Bledsoe going from Patriots to Bills type, like 9 years of pretty good but not great, taking his act to a new team. The new team is not known for its offensive coaches skill, and it could almost as easily go very bad as pretty good. I think adding one win for Carr is generous.

At RB we mitigated not upgraded. Kamara is a year older and could be suspended anywhere from 0 to 17 games. People say 6 but nobody knows, Goodell might want to send a message. Anyway, Williams vultured a lot of TDs in a career year but was still below average in YPC. Williams will help mitigate Kamara's absence and provide an upgrade at #2 when Kamara is back, but Kamara's absense will still hurt. RB is a wash for me.

We did not keep the defensive players we value, we kept the ones we could afford. We lost players the market thought were worth more and replaced them with players the market thought were worth less. If the market thought the replacements were better, the market would have offered the replacements more than the players we replaced them with and we would have lost them too. Maybe we are geniuses and this guy who can do backflips but was 'eh' in KC will become a hall of famer for us. But there is nothing that can prove that now. What I see now is we lost a starting DT and we lost a young linebacker who got us 100 tackles but is expendable because we like the old linebacker to stay good forever and the hurt linebacker who forced him into action to never get hurt again. Fact is we have a lot less depth now, and the depth we lost was the young depth many teams would have lost the old and hurt guys and promoted.

Tom Brady retired. The Bucs will likely be garbage. But the Panthers will go from PJ Walked and Sam Darnold to the #1 overall pick. And the Falcons we beat twice by a hair are young and had lots of cap to spend and raided some of our solid players and took our best DC leaving us to replace him with one of Dennis Allen's old drinking buddies from skull and bones at yale who didn't lead any good defense last year.

We probably the oldest team in the league. Tom Brady retiring sealed that. That is not good. The Falcons and Panthers are young. Yet here we are resigning peat. I could get a sack on Peat by tossing a box of little debbie's in one direction and juking in the other.

Edit: Also worth mentioning that the Bucs replacement for Tom Brady, Baker Mayfield, did beat us last year. I think we will be better than the Bucs because they are doing a rebuilding year to get young and we are putting that off so we should be a little better for 1-2 years after which they can be much better if their rebuild is not a disaster. But still, Mayfield could go undefeated against us, he did last year.

Early prediction 03/17/2023: It’s too early to give a final prediction but I will say 6-11 at this point and update later as I said in the earlier thread. I feel Carr is a minor and risky upgrade. Our schedule is a bit easier so maybe that gains us one game also. But I think we lost solid starting caliber players in free agency in Onyemata and Ellis and gained question marks. I think retaining Thomas and Peat is actually a minus and destroys accountability. We are also abou the oldest team in the league and needed Ellis for the future as David and Jordan decline, not Peat to keep us old. I think our division is getting better with the Panthers having a #1 pick qb and the Falcons raiding our defense and having cash. I think Allen is a bad coach and 4-12 is the sort of record he historically reverts to, especially with his coaches not Paytons. So the net for me is 6-11. We will see how the draft and free agency goes for us and for division rivals and if we trade any young stars to the Eagles for 5ths.

03/14/2023: Thanks! I think its too early to make a complete prediction now. Last year I was able to make an accurate prediction in mid-May, after all of free agency and the draft, including I think some free agents who settled on teams after the draft. We are starting to learn where the first round of free agents will land but we still don't know what will happen with the value rounds to come or the draft. We don't know if the Saints will keep Thomas or Peat, whose presence I think actually hurts team morale when other players see guys who don't produce collecting the big checks and taking away their reps in camp.

My early impression is not enough to predict an exact record this early. My gut feeling is that if all else was the same, which it is not, Carr could add 1-2 wins. But those 1-2 wins are not certain. I feel like Carr's career is at a crossroads after 9 years with one team and the hope that a fresh start will be prosperous. If Carr is back to 2021 form he could add 2 wins. But if things don't click, or if the oline relies on Peat and on other oline coming off injury who can't shake their injuries, and Carr gets off to a rough start, I feel he could completely deflate and we could be on the hook for a big contract to Bills Drew Bledsoe or worse, and Carr could even be benched before the end of the year. So I think we need to weigh in the chance of 2021 Carr with also the chance of sub-2022 Carr, with a slight chance of better than ever Carr and a slight chance of Jameis Winston or QB carousel if Carr implodes or gets injured. I think the net of all that is probably Carr adding 1 win, but if the oline relies on Peat and injured players and we dont add quality draft picks or young free agents, I think the chance of 2022 Carr increases, and the net gain I would predict then is nothing, about the same as 2022 Dalton.

Besides Carr, there is also I think some risk of a failure spiral with Dennis Allen. He was a 4-12 coach in the Raiders. His final year he drafted Carr and had renewed hope but it didn't all click and he went 0-4 and was fired. If it clicks, probably Dennis Allen is who he is, and maybe he even improves a little, but its exceedingly unlikely he is ever an elite coach. Elite coaches may start 7-9 or 6-10 but they dont tend to start their career 4-12, 4-12, 0-4, 7-10 after inheriting teams with better records than that in both jobs. I think there is more downside with Allen giving up and losing all confidence and reverting to 4-12 or worse than there is upside of him becoming a better coach in 2023.

For other changes, we have lost Kaden Ellis who was an exciting young player and quality depth who made great contributions. Onyemata was never super exciting but was a solid piece. Davenport was a bust but he had moments, highlights, so I would not pay him $13 million when he was worth $7 million, but I am not sure we will wisely spend the $7 million on another player we saved by him getting overpaid, we will likely spent that on Carr. We have lost a lot of players already and will likely lose more, and maybe not the players we need to lose like Thomas and Peat because the cap voldemort we call our gm structured their contracts so he can always claim it is cheaper on a 1 year basis to keep extending them forever until they are 100 years old than to take the cap hit and cut our losses. I have to see more about what we lose and gain but so far we have lost at least 1 win on losing defensive depth.

Also the Saints are one of the oldest teams in the league. This generally has a bad effect on record going forward. Cameron Jordan and Demario Davis will be a year older. I think this costs us 1 win.

Then there is the competitiveness of our division. The Bucs will be worse. They are also one of the oldest teams, and most over the cap, they lost a good qb and have dubious replacement plans, and and they are going full rebuild. But the Falcons added our best DC, two of our good defensive players, have a young QB, are a young team, and have big money to spend in the salary cap. The Panthers are young and have some money to spend too, and will be adding a #1 overall pick at QB replacing a chaotic merry go round, and will have a coach who comes in as a .500 type guy at least, not a .250 guy like we have. The Panthers are also a younger team than us and will have more young players step up. We only won 2 games in our division last year, both against the Falcons, who did a rebuild while otherwise performing similar to us except head to head. 2023 could be similar except the Bucs could be the team we beat twice while the Falcons and Panthers could sweep us. But more likely we could win 3 games in the division and win less outside the division since we kind of got unlucky in the division and luck outside the division last year.

Losing Kamara for a 6 game suspension could also cost us a win. We could mitigate if we replace him with the right value free agent or draft pick. But I could also see a scenario where the story blows up and Goodell decides to send a message and suspend Kamara indefinitely for an unacceptable violent assault and screw the Saints, and we totally miss on our plan B, and Kamara's absence all year costs us 3 games and puts us at the top of the 2024 draft if we dont give our pick to the Bills or Chiefs first.

I also think its important to remember Goodell has long signaled and hinted to the refs that the Saints are a public enemy and need to be taught a lesson, without anything official on paper that can ever be proven. Last year the refs could take it easy because we were out of serious contender status quickly, and clearly even if we had made the playoffs, Dalton was not knocking out the heavyweights like philly, sf, kc, or buffalo. If we did put it all together and everything was right, as some of you may predict with optimistic 14-3 records with out new HOF QB you may imagine, I think the refs would return to their old 2018-2021 hijinks and hurt us much more than they did in 2022, and no longer would we have Payton or Brees to overcome it, so I think the refs present a ceiling that makes it very hard for highly optimistic scenarios to materialize. We need a loaded KC type team and elite coach to beat the refs and the opponents, not a slight upgrade here and there and the hope that if we win a weak division its anybodies game in the playoffs. Goodell has made it clear to the refs that its not anybodies game in the playoffs, its his game more than ever there.

Much is being made of the Saints having an easy schedule in 2023. However our schedule in 2022 was not so hard, just average. We were in a weak division that I think will be improving with the Falcons and Panthers on the move while the Bucs plummet. And the crowning jewel of difficulty in our 2022 scheduled was the Eagles, who were missing Hurts when we beat them, so our 2022 schedule was probably a bit below average when you consider the Eagles are a much weaker team without Hurts. Overall, I think our easier schedule could net 1 win.

So my current feeling is we won 7 games last year + 1 game for adding Carr +1 game for an easier schedule - 1 game for the rest of free agency so far - 1 game for being one of the oldest teams getting older - 1 game for Kamara's suspension = 6-11. But free agency and the draft are not over yet for us or our division rivals, so time will tell. If we add some quality young healthy pieces on defense, oline, and rb that could mitigate my concerns. I hope we dont add those pieces with trades of future draft picks or overpriced backloaded contracts that will kill us in future years, but if we do I can't hold that against our 2023 record only future records in years beyond. But if we don't address those things well and we bet everything on aging injury prone players and negotiating to bring back Peat, Thomas, and more like them, and spend our draft capital trading up for a raw defensive end we feel could be the next Von Miller in 2027 if his dual ACL repairs work like the community college doctor hopes, we could be very bad. And if the rest of our division continues to make better moves than us that could put us more in a hole. And thats not even counting the chance that we trade Rasheed Shaheed and Peter Warner to the Eagles for 5th round picks. Maybe they want a shot at a ring and are willing to stop talking to the coaches for a week to get one. 

2022 Prediction (05/15/2022):

https://blackandgold.com/saints/101911-predict-saints-record-year-2.html#post952137

I will say 7-10. I hope we are better but I see risk. We were 9-8 last year and we lost a hall of fame caliber coach and replaced him with a career .222 coach who would blame the Raiders disfunction for that record. But remember the Saints were dysfunctional when Payton arrived, so disfunction may only stop lesser coaches. We have definitely upgraded at WR which is why I dont predict a .222 record though it could happen. We lost 2 pro bowl level players in free agency. A lot will depend on injury and perhaps suspension so if everything goes right we could win but I feel we have a lot of risk. Our qb is coming off an acl. Michael Thomas has not been healthy in 2 years. Cameron Jordan is getting old and Davenport is brittle. Our 3 biggest free agent signings all come with injury concerns over their careers. Taysom Hill is $10 million of glass and we cant sign a real TE because we have to justify his salary. Kamara could still be suspended and the offense has struggled with him out. Our quest under Mickey Loomis to have as few draft picks as possible has left us with an older and less deep roster. If everyone stays healthy we could win it all if Allen has a great second act as head coach, but Allen’s first act was weak and we have accumulated a lot of injury risk.