ESPN Analytics grades New Orleans Saints off-season with a lowly D

sfidc3 said

SOS before the season starts really isn’t a very reliable indicator….things change fast in the NFL….Nearly every year there are a few teams that improve significantly and a few that regress…..

I think that most of these less than stellar prognostications are due to the fact that DA is still the HC….IMO….

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Agreed. You look at 23s schedule vs 24s schedule just by the QBs we face, and its not close. We were 0-4 vs QBs that youd rank as upper half. We faced 0 elite QBs in 23. Thats changing in 2024, much, much tougher sledding against teams with good QBs. Its a QB driven league. Teams with good QBs....win.

Secondly, the Panthers are almost single handedly driving that skew in numbers. We play them twice. In 2023 their record in our SoS calculation was 14-20 based on their 7-10 the year prior - which actually brought our SoS UP. This year the Panthers record in our SoS calc is 4-30 based on their 2-15 record last year, substantially bringing our SoS down. Just the Panthers added 10 more losses and 10 less wins to our SoS this year vs last year.