Is it over for the New Orleans Saints? They’re coming off the bye week, and are staring at 7 straight games to end the season. What will they be playing for down the stretch?<\/p>\n
Are the Saints still alive for a playoff spot after all they’ve gone through this season?<\/p>\n
At 2-8, most people have already written them off<\/a>… and honestly, it\u2019s hard to blame them. But are they technically out of the playoff hunt? The answer is no…not yet anyway.<\/p>\n So You’re Saying There’s a Chance?<\/p>\n Now let’s not get too crazy. The odds are astronomical, but the path does exist, even if it\u2019s a one-in-a-million shot. It starts with one simple, and nearly impossible, task: the Saints cannot lose again.<\/p>\n They have seven games left on their schedule<\/a>, and they must win every single one of them to finish the season with a 9-8 record. That\u2019s step one…and it\u2019s the easiest part of this miracle scenario.<\/p>\n What Else Needs to Go Wrong?<\/p>\n Even if the Saints win out, 9-8 doesn’t guarantee a thing. They need the teams ahead of them to completely and totally collapse.<\/p>\n Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are leading the division at 6-4<\/a>. The Saints need them to lose at least five of their last seven games. The 6-5 Carolina Panthers (yes, really) would also need to hit a major losing streak. It\u2019s not enough to just win…they need everyone else to fall apart.<\/p>\n This last weekend, the Bucs took it on the chin from the Buffalo Bills. How will they respond to that? Could it knock their confidence down? Are the Panthers for real? Probably not. There’s a real chance that all of this could fall into place for a generational playoff snipe.<\/p>\n The real talk around Shreveport<\/a> and Bossier<\/a> isn’t about the playoffs anymore. It\u2019s about the 2026 NFL Draft.<\/a><\/p>\n Every Saints First Round NFL Draft Trade Since 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is it over for the New Orleans Saints? They’re coming off the bye week, and are staring at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,5102,896,55,2572,2571,88,6,397,8894,9],"class_list":{"0":"post-534644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-national-news","10":"tag-new-orleans","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints","12":"tag-neworleans","13":"tag-neworleanssaints","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-saints","17":"tag-shreveport-news","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115570224883983091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}