Saints: Winners and losers from Week 8 win over Buccaneers
By Kristen Wong
How about that New Orleans Saints win in Week 8?!
The Saints defeated the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 36-27 on Sunday in a decisive division matchup against all odds and against most expert opinions. (You know who you are, bite your tongue.)
Quarterback Jameis Winston got injured in the second quarter and didn’t return to the game, but his teammates took care of business and somehow thwarted the second best offense in the league.
Trevor Siemian played wisely in Winston’s absence (almost as if he had Sean Payton in his ear the whole time…), leading a Saints team that looked very different eight weeks into the season.
Tre’Quan Smith redeemed himself with a score. David Onyemata returned to the lineup, finally.
The game happened to fall on Halloween, and many Saints players dressed up as versions of their younger, in-form selves: Kevin White and Cameron Jordan, for two, were as agile and productive as ever.
Overall, this was a scarily good New Orleans performance against Tampa Bay — their NFC South division rivals, the defending Super Bowl champions, and the opponents who ended the Saints regular season in the very same stadium last year.
They finally got their revenge in 2021, and oh, it tasted so, so good.
With the third-string Siemian playing at center for most of the game, this matchup was honestly a total crapshoot and could have gone either way. We never thought the day would come when we would want Taysom Hill to play quarterback, but Sunday was that day.
Everything that could have gone wrong didn’t, and in the end, the Saints prevailed due to sheer grit and a comparative lack of unforced errors.
Which Saints players shone the most? Glad you asked.