Dallas City News

NFC South power rankings: Saints set the early tone with a dominant division win – Jaleel Grandberry, WhoDatDish.com

After one week, New Orleans sits atop their division.

Entering each season, every team is hoping to win the Super Bowl. For that to happen, teams must make the playoffs, and the easiest way to do that is winning your respective division. Before a team can claim a league title, or be crowned a conference champion, they must navigate their four-team division.

Considering the familiarity and rivals that are usually at play in division matchups, those games are usual very tough. That wasn’t the case for the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, who dominated the Carolina Panthers. The NFC South as a whole is 2-2 after one week. With two teams opening against each other, having at least one loss was likely.

1. New Orleans Saints

New Orleans was the surprise of Week 1, absolutely dominating the Panthers. The Saints delivered a performance that made all the analyst who counted them out rethink their predictions. Sure, Carolina is bad, but New Orleans looked really good.

Offensively, the team did whatever they wanted to, thriving on the ground and through the air. Defensively, the Saints had an answer for everything, taking the ball away three different times. Even the special teams showed out, blocking a punt and nearly returning another.

All in all, New Orleans looked like a complete football team that’s ready to compete, but the Saints must now be consistent. They’ll have a big test in Week 2, traveling to take on the Dallas Cowboys.

Saints coach Dennis Allen still doesn’t care about outside noise after huge Week 1 win – Luke Johnson, NOLA.com

Despite the win, Dennis Allen knows there’s still work to be done.

A 47-10 dismantling of the division rival Carolina Panthers could’ve been seen as a huge clap back for the New Orleans Saints — especially after the team was dismissed by many as a non-factor in the leadup to the 2024 season.

The Saints, however, are trying to keep things in perspective — and keep the outside noise on mute.

“I told the team this today: There’s a lot of people outside the building that didn’t think we were capable of doing much. Those same people are probably saying a lot of great things about you today that were saying a lot of negative things about you before yesterday’s game,” coach Dennis Allen said.

“So we try not to pay much attention to that, we’re trying to focus on what our job is, what we need to do, and how we get better. We know we’re going to have an extremely tough challenge this Sunday going up to Dallas.”

Mouton: ‘4 Takeaways’ on Saints’ blowout win over Panthers in Week 1 – Doug Mouton, WWLTV.com

There’s plenty of good to take away from New Orleans’ Week 1 win.

NEW ORLEANS — Tropical Storm Francine in the Gulf makes this a very serious week in South Louisiana, but Sunday in the Superdome was a party.

The truth is, New Orleans’ 37-point win in the opener probably says less about how great the Saints are and more about how terrible the Panthers are.

The Saints beat a similarly terrible Patriots team early last season by 34. It’s a lopsided win over a bad team, but the truth is, lopsided wins don’t come easily in the NFL.

1) Focus Grupe

Last season, then-rookie Blake Grupe missed seven field goals. Only two NFL kickers missed more.

In today’s NFL, 81 percent as a kicker isn’t good enough.

And the Saints brought in competition for Grupe in training camp. Irish Charlie Smyth has a cannon for a leg.

But Grupe did enough to beat him out, and in Week 1 he rewarded head coach Dennis Allen with the best kicking performance of his life.

Grupe went 4 for 4 in field goals – two of more than 50 yards, including his career high of 57. And he was 5 of 5 in extra points – 9 for 9 is a great start to the season.

A confident, successful kicker is gonna be really important for a team that wants to run the ball and play defense.

3) Overwhelming Defense

Speaking of defense, the Saints ‘D’ completely overwhelmed Bryce Young and the Panthers.

One week into the NFL season, the Saints are second in the league in total defense and tied for the league lead in takeaways with three.

Dennis Allen’s blitz package was brilliant.

Defensive back Alontae Taylor came clean three times and he did not miss.

Young had a terrible rookie season, and Sunday that quarterback rating was the worst of his now 17-game NFL career.

Honestly, though, this isn’t really surprising.

We expected the Saints to be good on defense.

And in Week 1, they absolutely were.

New Orleans Saints keep eye on Francine, prepare for possible preparation adjustments for road game against Dallas – John DeShazier, NewOrleansSaints.com

The Saints hope to continue their hot start despite the harmful weather on the horizon.

The New Orleans Saints are all too familiar with making plans around the possibility of hurricane impact, last having done so prior to the 2021 season. Then, the franchise moved football operations to Dallas-Fort Worth to prepare for the season opener before Hurricane Ida made landfall.

The Saints played their home opener in Jacksonville, Fla., against Green Bay, then road games against Carolina and New England before returning to New Orleans to play the Giants in the Caesars Superdome in Week 4, on Oct. 3, 2021.

Sunday’s game is on the road against the Cowboys, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

“Like everybody else in the city, we’re monitoring it,” Coach Dennis Allen said. “We’ll make plans accordingly. We’re going to meet (Monday) afternoon and see what kind of plans we need to make, and then we’ll go from there. I think we probably do this better than anybody else in the National Football League, so we’ll figure it out.”

RUN FUN: New Orleans totaled 180 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 37 carries against the Panthers, with the run game being as effective as coaches had hoped it would be.

The catalyst was an offensive line that featured three new starters and had a banner day.

“You’ve got to look at everything in the totality of what we were able to do,” Allen said. “When you run the ball like that, when you’re able to be effective throwing the ball and your quarterback doesn’t get hit much, and you put points up on the board like that, you can’t do that and have your offensive line not play well. So, I thought those guys played well, and yet, we’ll have a much stiffer test this weekend.