Saints Report: Saints defense dominants in week one win

The New Orleans Saints let their defense do the talking in a 16-15 week one win over the Tennessee Titans, limiting opposing Quarterback Ryan Tannehill to the worst passer rating of his 11-year NFL career.

WXXV News 25 Sports Director Jeff Haeger was on-hand for the season opener at the Superdome and brings us the full recap in the first Saints Report of the year.

Well, it took 43 minutes and 37 seconds before someone finally found the end zone and that someone was the New Orleans Saints, more specifically new quarterback Derek Carr to Rashid Shaheed from 19 yards out in the third quarter.

Otherwise, all defense holding the Titans to five field goals with three picks, three sacks, ten quarterback hits, and a blocked punt on special teams.

Long story short, the Saints now 1-0 for the fifth year in a row. Defensive End Cameron Jordan said, “Let’s start off with the Shoes, how about that? You start of shoes, and then you come up to these pants, and then you come up to the watch, and then you talk about the shirt, and the chain, and then we say everything has got to coordinate. Just like offense, special teams, defense, everything has got to be able to coordinate.”

Quarterback Derek Carr said, “That was the expectation. We’ve got to be able to score. We’ve got to get a touchdown to win this game, and thankfully we did, and I tried my best until the game is over to stay here, and like I said, I get emotional. But after that touchdown it’s so fun. It’s like in my head, I’m like oh, cool, first touchdown! And then like literally a half a second later, it was out. It was like, okay, now what do I got to do?”

Center/Guard Cesar Ruiz said, “They threw everything at us in the first half. They threw everything at us, and coming out after the halftime we saw it all so we knew what to do from there. Even though everything wasn’t clean, the fact that we were still able to make a lot of things happen shows what we can do.”

Offensive Tackle Ryan Ramczyk said, “Just to have that chance to ice it and be able to give Jamaal the ball and just to finish down there going into score to be able to kneel it out is as good as it gets in the NFL.”

Head Coach Dennis Allen said, “The best teams are able to finish in this league, and we were able to get into a competitive game in the fourth quarter and make enough plays to win the game, so I’m proud of the team for being able to do that.”

“Hey! That’s Marshon Lattimore. I don’t know if you saw him. He could’ve had three interceptions today. He had one, really could have had a pick-six, and that’s just game one. 16 games left. There’s so much room for improvement. That’s what we’re going to focus on. I think that, and the end of the day, we did a good job to get this win, whatever it takes. I’m super excited, but at the same time, we’ve got to go with this super aggressive mentality of we have to clean up our mistakes now.”

Now thinking back to last year, the Saints struggling in the close ones, losing six one-possession games so certainly a breath of fresh air to come out of week one with a one-point win.

Next up for the Black and Gold is four out of their next give games on the road.

The Saints travel to Carolina in week two for a Monday Night Football game against the Panthers.