The crushing defeat leaves the Saints 4-6 and on the brink, with almost no margin for error the rest of the way. Read on below for our analysis of when, and how, it all went so spectacularly wrong in Maryland on Sunday.

Having disappointingly fallen below .500 after a poor home loss to the Titans, in week 10 the Saints faced their final opponent before the bye week – the offensively-challenged Washington Redskins. Going into Sunday’s game, the Redskins ranked in the lower echelons of the league in virtually every offensive category, tending to rely on turnovers (and late-game heroics) to scrape the 3 victories they had previously recorded in 2015. By halftime on Sunday, those same Redskins were on pace for nearly 800 yards of offense, having torched the Saints in the first half. By whichever metric you used, it was a historically bad showing from the Saints defense. The offense then did their best to emulate the ailing defense in the second half, allowing the porous Redskins D to shut them out.

For those of you viewing our Player Grades for the first time, our Player Performance Grading System uses a 9-point color-coded “temperature based” scale to produce an easy to understand visual indicator of the performance of each player on rushing plays, passing plays and in the game overall. You can find a more thorough explanation of our grading system, along with diagrams of what exactly everything means, by clicking here.

And as always, for ease of reference, our 9-point color-coded grading scale is pictured below:

OFFENSE

Editor’s Note: Click on each individual table below to open a full-sized version in a new window/tab (it makes them easier to read).

A lot of the heat from Sunday may have been directed towards the defense (and the now departed Rob Ryan), but the Saints offensive efforts in Maryland were also not much to write home about. In a “mirror image” of last week, the offense started hot before cooling down markedly as the contest wore on. This time, Brees and the offense managed to put up 160 yards and 14 points in the first 20 minutes of the game – before mustering just 190 yards and getting shut out by Washington for the remaining two thirds. The similarities to the Titans game were alarming, and certainly makes you wonder what it is that has allowed defenses to adjust so successfully these past two weeks.

It’s not just the opposition defenses making “adjustments”, though. Sunday provided us the curious spectacle of Lelito and Kelemete rotating to split time at left guard. In our view, there is little to no obvious benefit in changing your O-Line personnel multiple times during a single game. Familiarity and cohesiveness are two facets of offensive line play you hear about again and again – and for good reason. Purposefully subbing in/out your left guard seems to fly in the face of this established wisdom. It may be that Lelito was simply not healthy enough to play a full snap count – but the fact Payton threw him back into the game during garbage time on the Saints final drive makes this seem doubtful. Whatever the reason, it was certainly a new one to us, especially considering Lelito fared quite well in the early going.

For the rest of the O-Line, Unger was the biggest let down – often getting overpowered by the Redskins sizable defensive interior which was able to stop 10 of the Saints 25 rushing attempts for 1-yard or less. Ingram’s usage on the day was another oddity, with the running back receiving just 5 carries while spending the majority of his 23 snaps acting as a pass protector or running outlet routes to the flats. Again, it didn’t seem as if Ingram was injured, just rather Payton chose to use CJ Spiller more. Now, we did call for Spiller to see more playing time after last week’s season lows in carries and touches, but they way we envisaged it was that it would be in tandem with Ingram – rather than instead of him. 5 carries for Ingram is simply far too low.

Through the air, after three series it looked as though Brees (who already had two TDs to his name) was on his way another “Good” or higher grade. However, by midway through the third quarter even #9 ran out of steam as Washington’s lead became unassailable. No doubt Brees missed some throws, but he certainly wasn’t aided by a fairly pedestrian showing from his wide receivers and tight ends. Take Cooks’ early 60-yarder out of the equation, and the eight of them (Cooks, Snead, Colston, Coleman, Graham, Watson, Hill and Hoomanawanui) combined for just 118 receiving yards on 13 catches (22 targets) with 3 drops. One interesting side-note in the WR corps – Brandon Coleman was out there for just a solitary play on Sunday. With his snap counts now falling for five consecutive weeks, and TJ Graham receiving more snaps and targets than him this week, we may be seeing Brandon Coleman’s time in Black & Gold coming to an inauspicious conclusion.

DEFENSE

Editor’s Note: Click on each individual table below to open a full-sized version in a new window/tab (it makes them easier to read).