In a wild Monday night matchup between the Saints and Vikings, the Saints simply made too many mistakes to have a chance at winning the game. Reggie Bush had a night for the ages, looking unstoppable on three consecutive punt returns. With the crowd chanting his name, Bush returned two of the punts for touchdowns and was a shoestring tackle away from taking back a third one. It was a shame that despite Bush’s best efforts the Saints came up short of a much needed victory.
The strange thing about this game was that it was the offense that was responsible for the loss, not the defense. The normally suspect Saints run defense was stout all night holding Adrian Peterson to 32 yards on 21 rush attempts. Limiting Peterson to 1.5 yards per carry is no small feat but again the accomplishment was overshadowed by turnovers and missed field goals. Even with Sedrick Ellis sidelined this unit was determined to keep the team in the game. Brian Young, who replaced Sedrick Ellis, played an inspired game racking up a sack and a forced fumble in the process. Scott Fujita and Jonathan Vilma routinely blew up blockers to stop Peterson from gaining any significant yardage. And despite the pass interference call on Kevin Kaesviharn that set up the Vikings’ game winning field goal, the secondary played a solid game. Rookie Tracy Porter continues to impress as he routinely does an admirable job covering the opposing team’s best receiver in his first year.
It seemed as though the Saints’ offense and field goal unit were determined to let the Vikings stay in the game. Martin Gramatica had a low kick returned for a touchdown and missed a manageable field goal in the fourth quarter. Reggie Bush fumbled the ball after a vicious facemask penalty that went uncalled by Ed Hochuli’s team of officials. How such a blatant facemask was missed is beyond me. The Saints’ mistakes continued as penalties racked up (11 for 102 yards), while interceptions and fumbles cut drives short. The story of this team so far this year is that they just can’t finish teams off. The Saints lack the killer instinct to pull away from the opposing team by playing sound football on both sides of the ball. There is always one unit that lets this team down in every game, whether it be special teams, offense, or defense, we have yet to see a complete game from this team. Only time will tell if Sean Payton can fix this problem or if this will be the story for the entire year.
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Last post (s) by Jeff Lalonde
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5 Responses to “Mistakes Cost Saints in Monday Night Thriller”
Posted: 10/07/08 at 12:40 pm
What a crazy game, I can’t believe the Saints shut down All Day and still lost this football game. The non call on the face mask was the last thing Hochuli needed, although the Bush fumble helped me secured my win in fanasty play, if I was a Saints fan I’d be shaking my head all week
Posted: 10/07/08 at 1:43 pm
Saints blew it badly! Hochuli, man how do 6 or 7 officials miss that blatant call on Bush? 2-3 Saints, never saw this coming.
Posted: 10/08/08 at 1:46 am
I cannot believe how much bad luck this team seems to have. It has to start changing soon, this is getting old.
Posted: 10/08/08 at 8:28 am
There were so many positives from the Monday night game, if they can just play a complete game for once they might be ok.
Posted: 10/08/08 at 10:44 am
Of all the the sub .500 teams, if this makes any sense, they are the best out there. They are better than 2-3, I would take them over ATL right now who are at 3-2. The NFC South is possibly as good as the NFC East.