Saints hold distinct advantage over majority of opponents on schedule

Derek Carr, New Orleans Saints
Derek Carr, New Orleans Saints / Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports
facebooktwitterreddit

The schedule seems to fall favorably for the 2023 New Orleans Saints, especially when you consider the glaring advantage the Saints have over most opponents.

Expectations are high for the 2023 New Orleans Saints season, and the biggest reason for this optimism is that the Saints finally seem to have the answer they've been looking for at the quarterback position since the retirement of Drew Brees.

The arrival of Derek Carr in the Big Easy, coupled with the perceived down NFC South and NFC as a whole, puts the Saints in prime position to thrive. It also helps that Carr is arguably a top-five quarterback in the conference without even throwing a regular season pass in a Saints uniform yet. When looking at the Saints schedule, though, this hope doesn't appear to be false.

Granted, a lot of these quarterbacks the Saints will be playing are either rookies or unproven signal-callers that don't yet have a full season under their belt. However, that doesn't belittle the point at all. If anything, it emphasizes it.

The schedule does get somewhat harder down the road, at least at this point on paper, but not terribly much. It also helps that the rest of the NFC South have complete question marks at the quarterback position. Given the talented veteran makeup of the Saints defense, and this is all adding up to be a recipe of success.

The main point here is, that the New Orleans Saints and their fans have a lot of reasons for optimism, or even full-fledged confidence, heading into the 2023 NFL season. That being said, there really isn't any reason to overthink the reasons why. If the quarterback is truly the most important position in the game, and Derek Carr is better than most opponents... you can do the math.