The New Orleans Saints (6-10) travel to Atlanta to take on the\u00a0 Falcons (7-9) Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Here are our staff predictions.<\/p>\n
Jeff Duncan (Season record: 8-8)<\/p>\n
Saints 20, Falcons 19: The Falcons are the more talented team, as they showed in their Week 12 win over the Saints in the Dome. But they\u2019re also the more inconsistent team. And right now, the Saints are playing with purpose and confidence. It\u2019s hard to go against the Tyler Shough show right now.<\/p>\n
Zach Ewing (Season record: 9-7)<\/p>\n
Saints 23, Falcons 21: Logic says the Saints come back to Earth this week, playing without Chris Olave (and every other skill player who started the season save Juwan Johnson) and against an Atlanta team playing good football. But my belief is that the Falcons played their Super Bowl last week (and only almost blew a 24-3 lead) against the Rams and won\u2019t get up for this one like the Saints will.<\/p>\n
Luke Johnson (Season record: 11-5)<\/p>\n
Falcons 20, Saints 18:\u00a0I love everything about Tyler Shough and the way he’s elevated this team in the closing stretch of the season. But it’s asking quite a lot out of him to continue that this week without his top pass catcher. I can still see New Orleans winning this game, but I’m leaning toward Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Matthew Paras (Season record: 9-7)<\/p>\n
Saints 20, Falcons 17:\u00a0Yeah, the Saints are trotting out a group of wide receivers that weren’t on the roster in Week 1. And yeah, the Falcons are coming off a huge win over the Los Angeles Rams and have played much better of late. But it would be a very Falcons-like move to lose in embarrassing fashion to end the season, and Tyler Shough can elevate those around him. Give me the Saints.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rod Walker (Season record: 11-5)<\/p>\n
Falcons 27, Saints 20: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I picked the Saints to beat the Falcons the first time. As well as Tyler Shough and Company are playing right now, I’m attempted to do it again. But I can’t. Especially after seeing what Bijan Robinson did Monday night against the Rams.\u00a0A 4-1 finish to the season for the Saints isn’t bad, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Orleans Saints (6-10) travel to Atlanta to take on the\u00a0 Falcons (7-9) Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,4095,896,55,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-650642","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-hardwall","10":"tag-new-orleans","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints","12":"tag-neworleans","13":"tag-neworleanssaints","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115831155229707260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650642","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=650642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}