Derek Carr's return to New Orleans Saints' starting lineup couldn't have gone much worse. He lost his top target to a concussion when his pass over the middle sailed on him. He lost to the worst team in the league and he became the first NFL quarterback to lose to 31 teams.
A day later, he lost his head coach . These are not the Saints of Sean Payton and Drew Brees, to be sure. But Carr and Dennis Allen expeditiously raised hopes of parading another Lombardi Trophy down Bourbon Street when the Saints totaled 91 points in back-to-back blowouts of Carolina and Dallas to start the season.
They scored on their first nine possessions in a 47-10 shellacking of the Panthers in the opener, then topped that a week later at Jerry World when they reached the end zone on their first half-dozen drives in a 44-19 jawdropper. Those were heady times — and, as it turned out, fleeting. The Saints have lost seven straight games since Week 2 amid a flurry of injuries, including a strained oblique that sent Carr to the sideline for three weeks.
Four of those losses were by double digits, among them a 33-10 Thursday night whooping from Payton and his new team, the resurgent Denver Broncos. The costliest loss was the Saints' 23-22 defeat in Charlotte on Sunday when Carr couldn't lead his team into field-goal range in the final minute and the Saints left town with the same 2-7 record as the Panthers, a team that's statistically dreadful and historically bad. So, Dennis Allen, who was previously fi.