Good question 🤔
Not making them run clock when they had exactly 1 minute left with no timeouts was a head scratcher.
You can say they chose to kick deep to avoid the possibility of a long return.
However, the Saints routinely stop the return man on average at the 26 yard line.
There’s also the possibility that the Saints could have stopped the returner short of the 20 yard line.
Even better there could have been a penalty that would have backed them up around the 15 yard line.
With any of those outcomes, there would have been about 10 seconds of game clock removed and even if they had a chance for a FG it would have been from beyond 60-70 yards. They wouldn't have even tried it. Probably all Hail Mary heaves to the endzone.
That was a baffling decision to Kickoff into the endzone. It seems to me that putting the ball into play would have had better possibly outcomes.