3 key Saints that’ll be pivotal in a Week 4 victory over the Detroit Lions
By Drake Lohse
No. 1 Janoris Jenkins — Jenkins is OUT
Being a Saints’ fan for almost twenty years has been one of the more invigorating, frustrating, rewarding, diminishing, beautiful experiences of this writer’s young life.
The first ten years were a North Dakota winter: each year began with hope and optimism, but by the end of the season, you were reduced to scavenging every nook, cranny, and corner of every minute of every game, searching for something that made being a fan of such a misunderstood team worth it.
The last ten years?
Being a Saints’ fan the last ten years has been more like some sort of psychedelic, endless summer, where all the little things you never thought would happen, have happened, and all the friends from high school who made fun of you for being a Saints’ fan slowly stopped having anything to say.
More from Who Dat Dish
- Are the Saints playoff contenders or pretenders in 2022?
- 3 takeaways from Saints unofficial depth chart ahead of preseason opener
- Saints 2022 Training Camp: Top 5 takeaways from Day 13
- 3 things to know about new Saints QB K.J. Costello
- Kirk Merritt could be a difficult player for the Saints to cut
My point being, sometimes we Saints’ fans of present day get carried away with all this success; namely, we sometimes forget how lucky we are to have the names we have.
One of those names is Janoris Jenkins. Acquiring Jenkins late last season felt like that move in Madden Franchise you never could quite pull off but always wanted to; finally, the Saints have not one, but two lockdown cornerbacks sharing the field in tandem.
Jenkins’ season got off to a raucous start. The former New York Giant yanked his first pick-six in a Fleur-de-Lis as his new squad bamboozled and embarrassed Tom Brady on national TV.
However, for the past two weeks, the man bought into be a stark upgrade over Eli Apple is looking more and more like Eli Apple. Two weeks in a row, Jenkins has committed foolish, arguably blatant pass interference penalties that have effectively ended games that were still within the Saint’s grasp.
There’s no way the Saints will be able to beat the Lions, or anybody, if they keep racking up the penalty yardage that they have against both the Packers and the Raiders. 129 yards of penalties in a single game is a team-wide issue, but the Saint’s must be able to rely on their veteran cornerback, especially late in the game.