Saints change Week 1 practice routine after 5 consecutive opening losses

Not since 2013 have the Saints won their Week 1 game, and that season began with a 5-0 start.

METAIRIE, La. — The New Orleans Saints lost their first game last season and then won 10 in a row. In 2017, they lost their first two games and then won eight in a row.

Certainly, the desire is to avoid those season-opening defeats. Not since 2013 have the Saints won their Week 1 game, and that season began with a 5-0 start.

What makes the Saints different this season than many others since coach Sean Payton arrived is the high level of continuity from one season to the next. The team returns nearly its entire starting offensive line, wide receivers and primary running back. On defense, the team has its entire starting secondary, all three linebackers and a deep and versatile defensive line.

This has the makings for another special season, hopefully one that doesn’t end with more heartbreak.

Considering all that, the desire this week is obvious.

“A good start every year is important,” Payton said Friday during his morning teleconference with New Orleans media. “It’s better than a poor start.”

By some measures, losing a Week 1 game five seasons in a row might be happenstance, an unfortunate coincidence for a team that has won 24 regular season games over the last two seasons. But on another measure, the Saints certainly want to fix whatever issues might plague them in the opening week.

Last season, the Saints let Ryan Fitzpatrick throw for more than 400 yards and allowed 48 points to a Tampa Bay team that won only four more games and then fired its coach. A trade for cornerback Eli Apple after Week 4 helped solidify the New Orleans secondary.

Two seasons ago, the Saints sputtered on offense on a Monday night in Minnesota and then faced the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots the following week. That 0-2 start turned out to be against a pair of teams that reached the conference championship round.

The Week 1 losses the three previous seasons came at the beginning of a trio of 7-9 seasons. Three teams that had glaring deficiencies, commonly in the defensive secondary. In those seasons, the Saints lost in 2014 at Atlanta, in 2015 against Oakland and 2016 at Arizona.

In the 2015 loss to Oakland, a suspect defensive pass interference penalty on fourth down let Oakland keep alive its winning drive.

Saints opponents in those five losses threw for 1,829 yards with 14 touchdowns and zero interceptions while completing 70.5 percent of their passes, good for a 131.88 passer rating. The Saints also allowed seven rushing touchdowns and 4.65 yards per carry. Opponents averaged 36 points per game, never scoring fewer than 29.

“It would be nice to start out in the win column,” said quarterback Drew Brees, who can't take much blame for those five losses with 10 touchdowns, two interceptions and a 108.4 passer rating in those games.

To help fix things, Payton said Friday the team changed its Week 1 practice schedule from past seasons. The opening week is unique from most others with how it comes after the roster cut-down from 90 to 53.

“We try to look at a handful of things,” Payton said. “Obviously, two or three times in a row is one thing. The routine has changed, practice wise. Kind of how we look at the daily schedule from the last roster cut down to the game on Monday.”

On Monday is when the Saints will face the Texans. Success against Houston will come with how well the Saints keep the quick-footed Deshaun Watson from extending plays. Deandre Hopkins is a constant scoring threat with 24 touchdowns over the last two seasons. 

And then there's J.J. Watt. Figuring out how to keep him from reaching Brees always is a challenge.

Cameron Jordan said he couldn’t recall the reasons for the string of Week 1 losses, but he remembered last season when “Fitzpatrick was playing like Fitz-magic,” he said.

“The last two years, we hit our stride midseason,” Jordan said.

That’s all fine and good. But Jordan wants something different.

“You want to start off hot right out the gate,” he said.