4 Quotes: Kellen Moore Has Blunt Assessment of Saints After Ugly Rams Shutout

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The New Orleans Saints fell to 0-2 in the preseason after its shutout 34-0 against the Los Angeles Rams.

Head coach Kellen Moore was just as bewildered as the people back on the Gulf Coast watching the game as the New Orleans Saints lost to the Los Angeles Rams. Read our game story here.

While it was a preseason game, the Saints did not want that embarrassing result at all as they committed three turnovers, two of which happened inside the 10-yard line in the Rams' territory, and were the preseason returned for a 100-yard touchdown. There's also the fact that the Saints went 0-for-3 in the redzone and committed 12-penalties that resulted in 96 yards.

Here are four notable quotes from his postgame presser.

Opening Statement

Aug 22, 2026; Inglewood, California, USA; New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore (left) and Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay shake hands after the game at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Regular season, pre-season, does not matter. You know, those ones aren't the ones you want. You know, that was a big-time missed opportunity for us. It starts with me: we didn't respond the right way. I thought we had a really good week out here. As far as the workload that we got, we just missed an opportunity at the end of this week, and obviously it's really frustrating. At the end of the day, film is your resume in this league—coaches, players. We didn't coach well enough to prepare ourselves to take advantage of this opportunity, and so, obviously, hopefully it's going to be a really valuable lesson for our team, a response opportunity for our team moving forward with one more week of essentially pre-season football, preparation week, and a game in Dallas.

What did you make of all the penalties today?

Aug 22, 2026; Inglewood, California, USA; New Orleans Saints tight end Treyton Welch (82) and defensive end Malakai Williams (56) pray on the field after a game against the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Griffin Hooper-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Yeah. Just a lack—lack of discipline, lack of detail. A lot of them are under our control. You know, 12 penalties in a football game is—you're not going to win football games. And I feel like we've talked a lot about that, and it was obviously a step back from the progress that we felt like we've made. So it's going to be a lesson.

On Zach Wilson and Spencer Rattler’s performances

Obviously, we're going to have to watch the film really closely because, you know, your gut reaction is obviously that we want to accomplish more, you know, as an offense. We had the unfortunate interception in the first half. We had one in the red zone in the second half where we're driving. We're just going to have to watch this film and get better. I thought those guys had some really good work throughout this entire week, and obviously, as a team collectively, we didn't take advantage of this opportunity today.

In a game like this, you mentioned that the regular season or preseason doesn’t matter. How do you walk the line between utilizing what’s valuable to you and reacting to a game without the starters?

We're going to get to learn some great lessons from this game, I think, at the end of the day. There's going to be some challenging lessons coming out of this game, but I think it's going to be lessons nevertheless. And I think that just shows you the discipline, the details of football. You know, they didn't have the penalties. They didn't turn the ball over. They ran the ball well. They took advantage of opportunities in the red zone. You know, it's a game of execution, and I think at the end of the day we didn't prepare ourselves well enough from a coaching perspective. Our guys weren't there, and so we got to reset together. And, hey, we're going to go back to Metairie. We're going to have a great week of practice out there, get ourselves ready

Winners and Losers

Who were the biggest winners for the Saints in its loss to the Rams? Who were the biggest losers? Check out our thoughts here.

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