SAINT-DENIS, France — Just before kickoff of the first-ever NFL game in France, Cam Jordan and Alvin Kamara ran onto the Stade de France field to lead a “Who Dat” chant.
Though the New Orleans Saints were 5,000 miles from home, the stadium sounded like the Caesars Superdome. After a week of festivities, and years of planning, the Saints were France’s team.
But midway through the third quarter, the dynamic flipped. Suddenly, thousands of Terrible Towels were waving. Tyler Shough had just thrown a crucial interception in the red zone.
And a trip that was supposed to be about the Saints was now anything but. They were just another struggling football team, running into the same problems that had bothered them stateside.
The Saints suffered a 16-10 defeat to the Steelers on Sunday, bringing them to 2-5. And like so many other defeats this year, they followed the same pattern: They started slow, couldn’t run the ball and couldn’t win on the margins in a sport that requires it.
Too often on Sunday, the Saints looked like they were counting on Shough to bail them out of every situation. And he did an admirable job: Shough threw for 278 yards on 30-of-38 passing with a touchdown and an interception.
That’s part of a quarterback’s job, of course. But there’s a fine line, and the Saints appear to be constantly crossing it.
In no realistic scenario, barring a Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen, should a starting quarterback lead his team in rushing. But against the Steelers, Shough’s 7 yards on three attempts led New Orleans in rushing.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers — with his 8 yards before two kneel-downs dropped his total to 6 — would have led the Saints, as well.
When a French reporter asked Kellen Moore about his team’s slow starts earlier this week, the coach couldn’t help but crack a joke. The Saints, after all, had failed to score in 19 of their 23 games under Moore, who gave his usual answer about needing to be better before taking a lighter approach given the setting.
“Maybe the time change will help us,” he said.
It did not.
From the offense’s opening drive, the Saints again couldn’t run the ball. And while Shough hit a series of short passes to dink and dunk downfield, the 11-play drive still stalled at Pittsburgh’s 48-yard line to force a punt.
Defensively, familiar problems also remained. Jaylen Warren, one of the league’s more underrated running backs, gashed the Saints on the ground. A run-heavy opening drive from Pittsburgh set up a 28-yard field goal, putting New Orleans down 3-0, a hole that carried into the second quarter.
The Saints, too, had their usual trouble containing tight ends: Rodgers later found the 6-foot-7 Darnell Washington on a mismatched 5-foot-11 Kool-Aid McKinstry for a goal-line touchdown to take a 10-3 lead.
But not everything about Sunday’s game was the same as usual, even beyond the trip overseas.
For one, referee Bill Vinovich called his first Saints game since the infamous NOLA no-call in 2019. And the pro-Saints crowd let him hear it, booing him nearly every time he was introduced.
And there were pivotal calls that ended up mattering. On New Orleans’ second drive, replay officials overturned what would have been a Shough fumble when a closer camera angle showed that the quarterback’s knee was down first. That let the Saints keep possession and settle for a 38-yard field goal, tying the game 3-3.
The Saints’ next drive also had some fortunate fumble luck. Twice near the goal line, Shough first avoided a disaster when a Steelers defender punched the ball out — only for it to fly out at the 1-yard line, instead of into the end zone for a touchback. Then, replay overturned another called Kendre Miller fumble — leading Shough to find Devaughn Vele on fourth-and-goal for a game-tying touchdown with 1:45 left in the first half.
New Orleans, though, couldn’t replicate its success in the “middle 8” — the final four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half — from a week ago against the New York Giants.
After Vele’s touchdown, Rodgers led the Steelers on a crisp 11-play, 40-yard drive, and Boswell hit a 47-yard field goal as the first half expired.
Then, to start the third quarter, a crucial Shough mistake wiped out a promising drive. The second-year quarterback threw the first red-zone interception of his career when Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Payton Wilson picked off a pass intended for Chris Olave.
But the Saints still had a chance, thanks to two timely third-down sacks by Chase Young. On the first, the Steelers settled for a 39-yard field goal — but the Saints could not take the lead on the ensuing possession: Daniel Carlson missed a 52-yard field goal that kept it at 16-10.
Then, when another Young sack forced a Pittsburgh punt with around seven minutes left, the Saints went three-and-out. Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen sacked Shough, giving the Steelers a possession that would allow them to run out the clock.
To make matters worse, the Saints committed an offside penalty on fourth-and-3 that allowed Rodgers to kneel instead of Boswell hitting another field goal.
The sequence was an embarrassing end to a trip that the Saints had taken so much pride in.
There was nothing Shough could do about that.
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