The New Orleans Saints entered the season with relatively low expectations, and they still found a way to underwhelm, winning just five games, and finishing last in the NFC South. While several factors contributed to this horrid season in New Orleans, a major factor was injuries.
The Saints started the year hot in the first two weeks, then the team started falling apart, with several key players picking up significant injuries. From that point, New Orleans didn’t have the talent to consistently hide all of its other issues, so the season snowballed into a complete mess.
Because of all of the injuries, the team has conveniently used them as an excuse for the product put on field this season. While health undoubtedly affected the Saints this past season, having a healthy team isn’t really always a matter of chance, and a familiar person recently reminded New Orleans of that.
Former Saints head coach Sean Payton, who led a surprising Denver Broncos team to a 10-7 record this year and a playoff appearance, recently took time to talk about injuries in his end-of-season presser. Payton praised his current franchise, citing that Denver was the least-injured team last season, and the second least-injured team this year.
He went on to say that a lot goes into that being the case, and that conversely, teams on the other end of the injury scale earn their status as well. One of the teams on the other end of the scale is Payton’s former franchise, and it’s proprobably not a coincidence he made this statement.
Saints GM Mickey Loomis talked about 2024 season being derailed by injuries.
— Fletcher Mackel (@FletcherWDSU) January 16, 2025
Today at his season-ending media Q&A Sean Payton talked about Broncos being least injured team in NFL for 2 seasons and says teams struggling with injury issues "earn that." pic.twitter.com/tDid2yPDoc
Sean Payton takes subtle shot at Saints injuries issues
Football is a violent sport with a 100% injury rate; injuries are going to hit every team. Sometimes guys are just unlucky and sustain unavoidable injuries. However, Payton is right. There are also things that can be done at an organizational level to minimize the risk of injury.
This was exemplified to a degree when Darren Rizzi took over midway through the season in New Orleans and made the pre-practice activation warm up mandatory for the entire team. If an issue like that was present, there’s no telling what other problems exist in the organization that contribute to injuries.
Whatever the problems are, the Saints need to identify them and change them, or the team will have other seasons like the one in 2024.