The Saints have been accustomed to being an annual playoff contender for most of Drew Brees’ era. They went 3 years without a post-season from 2014 to 2016, but in their 15 years with the Brees franchise, they’ve reached the knockout stages 9 times and have never finished worse. 7-9.
However, reaching post-production without Brees would be difficult.
The Saints are sitting 8-8 as they head into the final week of the 2021 NFL regular season. They’re the final team in the NFC Wild Card race and will need to win to be able to have a fifth in a row. next season. That won’t even guarantee them a playoff spot.
This New Orleans team is nothing like the team that won the NFC Men’s Championship last year. They are much thinner in the early fall and have started to have four different back fours, with Taysom Hill being their top pick at the end of the season. All to say that if the Saints make it to the knockouts, Sean Payton deserves it great number of credit for his ability to keep this team afloat to start the post-Brees era.
How can the Saints qualify for the post-season? There’s only one way.
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1. The Saints must defeat the Falcons
The Saints have partial control over their path to post-season. They must finish the season with a score of 9-8 if they are to win the 7th seed in the NFC tournament. So they’ll have to beat their rival Falcons on the way to making that happen.
The rivalry between New Orleans and Atlanta has turned into a late one. The Saints have a 6-5 record in their last 11 games against the Falcons, and together they’ve won two or three in that time. However, they lost to Atlanta earlier in the season; The Falcons took a 27-25 win in which Matt Ryan threw for the season 343 passes and two touchdowns.
Trevor Siemian started that game for New Orleans, so perhaps their attack would work better with Hill in charge. Their passing isn’t as good under Hill, but they can run the ball. The Falcons have the seventh-worst defense in the NFL and have allowed 127.9 yards per contest this season, so Hill and Alvin Kamara should have a chance at leading the Saints to victory. That is part of the reason that they opened a 4.5-point handicap in this match.
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2. 49ers must lose to Rams
That said, the Saints are not guaranteed to make it to the knockout stages if they beat the Falcons. They also need the 49ers to lose to the Rams to sneak in as the 7th seed.
The 49ers currently own a 9-7 record. A win or draw will automatically give them a better record than the Saints, so New Orleans won’t be able to catch them on the leaderboard. The 49ers are the only NFC team yet to win a playoff spot, so the only way the Saints can get in after the season is if they have the same track record as the 49ers.
If the 49ers and Saints tie in the standings, the Saints will have the tiebreak needed to knock the 49ers out of the knockout stages. The Saints have a better divisional record than the 49ers and would have a better conference record than San Francisco if they finished the year in first place. That should give the Saints an edge over the 49ers in any game, including a three-way tie, which the Eagles will win.
So the only way the Saints can get into the post-season is by winning and losing the 49ers. FiveThirtyEight gives the Saints a 39% chance of being the last NFC team to win a Wild Card landing.
