After starting the season slowly and dropping two of their first three games, the Atlanta Falcons are now 6-3 and sitting in first place in the NFC South. Their opponent on Sunday, the New Orleans Saints, has seen its season unfold in exactly the opposite fashion.
New Orleans stormed out of the gate with back-to-back blowout wins over the Panthers and Cowboys, but has since lost seven in a row. Things got so bad that the Saints fired head coach Dennis Allen earlier this week.
When they take the field against Atlanta on Sunday, though, Falcons wideout Drake London expects to see a different — and improved — version of the team.
“It’s a fresh start to them,” London said, via The Athletic. “Obviously, they didn’t want whoever was the head coach over there. You could kind of see by their social media presence and stuff like that so they are probably going to have a lot more juice this week.”
This is personally the first time I’ve heard a player reference a team’s social media presence as an indicator of how it will play, but then again, players need all the motivation they can muster for division games. There are certainly stranger things that players have used to gin that up.
In any event, juice or not, the Saints are working at a talent deficit at the moment. It has shown up on both sides of the ball, but especially on defense, where they have been leaking yards and points on the regular. If London can overcome the hip injury he sustained last week against Dallas and be on the field in Week 10, he should be in position to have a big day against a poor secondary that also lost its best cornerback (Marshon Lattimore) at the trade deadline.
