NEW ORLEANS – Even the New Orleans Saints players themselves are admittedly tired of saying the same things about needing to finish off these close games. But they also didn’t ignore the fact Sunday that they’re still playing good football and have a great chance to make the playoffs. Their 4-5 record still leads the NFC South pending how the Carolina Panthers (3-5-1) fare on Monday night.
Here are some of the highlights of what players said after the game:
“The bottom line is and the fact of the matter is we still control our own destiny. I mean, it's right there in front of us,” quarterback Drew Brees said. “We don't like to suffer a loss like that, we certainly don't like to suffer a loss like that at home. And I think it just goes to prove nobody’s invincible. You don't just win at home just because you're playing at home. You've got to execute, you've got to play well, you've got to take care of the football. And I think we did that for the most part today, but the turnovers got us.”
"We know we're a good team. We're 4-5, but we're a scary 4-5," cornerback Keenan Lewis said, according to The Times-Picayune.
“We’re not making plays [in the end of these close games]. What’s hard is it’s a half a second, it’s a half a yard, it’s horribly close. So we have to make plays at the end of games. Other teams have, and we have not. It's a simple thing," offensive tackle Zach Strief said. "It’s a game of inches, and we’ve lost a whole lot of inches this year."
“We’re good. We’re not going to break. We started off so bad the first of the year that [Sunday] was nothing. We’re light years away from the way we started. … Like Coach [Sean] Payton says, we play like we did the second half the rest of the year, we’ll win every game, I’ll tell you that,” said safety Kenny Vaccaro, who quickly clarified that those weren’t Payton’s exact words but his own spin on what Payton said. “We’re going to be tough to beat, that’s what he said.”
“No team can beat us [if we play like that]," outside linebacker Junior Galette said of the postgame message. "But we’ve got to start early, especially against a team like that. We can’t start late. We can’t give a good team like that a lead. It’s tough to win already. ... It’s frustrating. We played our tails off. It’s frustrating that these wins can go either way.”