Winners and losers from Saints’ mortifying Week 16 loss to Dolphins

Saints Losers from Week 16

Ian Book

We’ll just get this out of the way. Book was put into a near-impossible situation and as a result, he failed. Hopefully New Orleans didn’t break the kid for good with what they asked him to do on Monday night.

The Notre Dame rookie had no offensive line blocking for him and that led to him getting sacked eight times. Some of those were due to him not throwing the ball away but most of the time, it felt like Book had no time to throw. That can’t happen for a rookie quarterback making his first start.

Book finished his NFL debut completing 12-of-20 passes for 135 yards and two interceptions, one of which was a pick-six. It was a miserable game for the Notre Dame product and I sincerely hope if he’s thrown out there again in the future that Sean Payton does a better job with calling plays.

Offensive Line

I understand that both Terron Armstead and Ryan Ramczyk were out but this isn’t a new problem for New Orleans in 2021. These guys have missed several games this season and the o-line has never looked this bad.

Caleb Benenoch was one of the starters for the Saints and at one point, a guy named Kyle Murphy was in at tackle. That right there should tell you how this game was going for the black and gold.

Cesar Ruiz had a really bad night at the office and fans are pretty fed up with watching that guy get whooped week after week. He’s always responsible for the big sacks and at this point, the Saints are stuck with him for the next two years unless they find a better option at right guard. He’s been laughably bad.

Sean Payton

I give Sean Payton a ton of credit this year considering all of the crap thrown New Orleans’ way but he didn’t put the team he did have in the best position to succeed. Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram were used a total of 17 times in the run game for a whopping 69 (nice) yards. That’s it.

With a rookie quarterback starting for the first time in his NFL career, dialing up more than just 17 runs with your two big running backs would have been a wise idea. Yes, Miami was stacking the box more but even then, Kamara was making waves.

It made absolutely no sense for Payton to put the game solely in his rookie signal-caller’s hands. For that reason, he’s in the losers column this week.

This was a horrible game for New Orleans but no one is surprised that they lost. This was not a game they were destined to win due to all of the COVID positives. Let’s just get this dumpster fire out of our heads and move onto the final two games of the 2021 season.