By Associated Press | Fox Sports
While Payton tersely mentioned that assistants such as defensive coordinator Dennis Allen, offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr. and tight ends coach Dan Campbell all would make good head coaches, he said he didn’t want to talk about that now. He was more concerned with the recent performance of his team. New Orleans’ 33-14 loss at home to Carolina on Sunday gave the Saints two losses in their past five games. They needed fourth-quarter comebacks in their past three victories, two of which were decided by just three points.
“With the way we played yesterday and some of the things that we’ve done offensively recently, our focus is going to be strictly on the Saints and the fundamentals and techniques we need to improve on,” Payton said. “We’ve got a lot of things we want to improve on — and this week gives us a chance to do that.”
As the NFC’s top seed, New Orleans has a first-round bye and is just two home victories from reaching the second Super Bowl in the franchise’s 52 seasons. What remains to be seen is whether the Saints can recapture the juggernaut form and swagger of midseason, when they posted a handful of multi-touchdown triumphs.
“The No. 1 seed guarantees you nothing except you host a playoff game,” Saints defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins said, noting that New Orleans cannot afford to dismiss Sunday’s loss to Carolina as an outlier — even if it was a low-stakes game with numerous starters seeing less action than usual.
Quarterback Drew Brees and dynamic running back Alvin Kamara were among the Saints that saw no action on Sunday, and numerus others saw their snap counts scaled back. ...
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