Moore said he and his staff will evaluate the program from top to bottom this week, including a continuation of delving into why New Orleans has routinely gotten off to slow starts. Even with a field goal and touchdown in the second quarter against Pittsburgh on Sunday — the Saints trailed 13-10 at halftime — the Saints have been outscored 44-6 in the first quarter and 90-53 in the first half this season. In the second half and overtime, New Orleans has a 109-104 advantage
“I’m going to spend a lot of time focused on how we can find a way to score points,” Moore said, noting that the Saints often have deferred and elected to kick off after winning the coin toss. “We got a few instances like this past game where we’ve had some success, we’ve moved the ball and then we just kind of got stalled out as the drive progressed. We’ve just got to find a way to get ourself in position to get those points. Our second drive (against the Steelers) was a field goal and the third drive was a touchdown. That was a six-possession game. Those don’t come around very often in this league, but we recognize how valuable each possession is.”
Moore said the opportunities to learn and grow from the self-scout is immense.
“Any other time you get a chance to kind of do a quick self-evaluation is always valuable, but these are always good examples,” he said. “I think last year we had one, I thought it was really productive at that point. When I was in Philly we were 2-2 and we went into our bye week, and I think we got to grow a lot from that. And so, I think these are always valuable experiences for everyone.”
“Everything” also encompasses the kicking game; Daniel Carlson has missed four of 12 field goal attempts, all from 50-plus yards, and two point-after attempts.
“(The bye week) allows you to kind of take truly the emotion out of this, which I think is always really important,” Moore said. “This is an emotional game, we all get emotional, we all want the same goals and aspirations, we want to win football games. We have to take the emotion out of it in moments like this to just evaluate it.”