The New Orleans Saints could keep their incredibly slim playoff chances alive with a win in Week 17 against the Carolina Panthers. If they were to lose, they would get eliminated from playoff contention which isn’t all too bad considering how badly banged up they are.
Heading into the weekend, the Saints have seen a number of players remain on the injury report and the COVID list. Some of the most notable are Terron Armstead and Marcus Williams. Ryan Ramczyk isn’t on the injury report anymore but can’t seem to get off the COVID list. Finally, their starting center Erik McCoy got added to the COVID list to make it three or four starting linemen out of this game. Guys like Demario Davis, Malcolm Jenkins and Taysom Hill are all set to return though. With the information we got here, this is still a severely depleted Saints team that should have Taysom Hill starting at quarterback with Deonte Harris back from his suspension. These two teams lined up against one another earlier in the season and New Orleans got smacked around. It was their first loss of the year and one that came when then Saints were missing around half of their coaches due to a COVID outbreak in their organization. It was also at a time when the Panthers looked like Super Bowl contenders with Sam Darnold at the helm, they were 3-0 and have quickly fallen to 5-10.
Darnold has been confirmed to start the game off for the Panthers, but will still have to do it without Christian McCaffrey as he nurses his own injury. Like we saw last week, the Panthers placed both Cam Newton and Darnold in the lineup to get a sense of who is the better fit for the offense. I will add on though that the quarterback position is really the only thing that seems to be an issue. I love the talent that they have put together across their defense but this team just isn’t the same without McCaffrey and a solid quarterback.
I have a feeling this game will be incredibly close as all division rivalry games have a tendency to be. Although, I am going to roll with the Saints here. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Panthers since their hot start and they are clearly just running into games with no momentum and a lot more questions than answers.
The Atlanta Falcons could chase after the Saints with a win but their team is in a similar situation, they don’t have a ton of talent available to them yet keep on fighting. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers get a pretty easy matchup with the New York Jets as well. They already have clinched the division title but this is just for their run at the number one seed out in the NFC. It will be interesting to find out how these games go and if anything may change moving forward even if it is incredibly unlikely that it does.