Saints Nation: If Saints Lose to the Chiefs, You Can Kiss Season Goodbye

How big of a disaster is starting 0-2? Well, it’s not good, that’s for sure. The odds of an NFL team making the playoffs after an 0-2 start are 12%. If the Saints lose to the Chiefs Sunday, they will start 0-3, and only five teams in NFL history have made the playoffs after that kind of disasterous start. Only one team ever has made the playoffs with an 0-4 start. So the odds are already firmly against the Saints considering where they stand now, but if they lose to the Chiefs Sunday you can pretty much start thinking about draft choices. Yes it’s a long season, and yes it’s early. But the 0-3 start historically is about as close to the kiss of death as you can get. The good news is the Saints still have 5 divisional games left, and if they swept those they would be in great shape regardless. After all, they’re only 0-1 in the division and they managed to go 5-1 last year after starting 1-1. Still, 0-3 is a tough mountain to climb, not only because of the historical factor, but because of how the Saints’ schedule shakes out.

Consider what’s coming up after this Chiefs game at home, which should be a win under normal circumstances:

@ Green Bay
vs. San Diego
@ Tampa
@ Denver
vs. Philadelphia
vs. Atlanta
@ Oakland
vs. San Francisco
@ Atlanta
@ NY Giants
vs. Tampa
@ Dallas
vs. Carolina

So the Saints have what I consider to be six straight extremely difficult games prior to heading to the west coast to face the lowly Raiders. After that, they come back for four more brutal matchups. This is the kind of schedule hard enough to make any NFL team feel uncomfortable. It’s not so much that the Saints aren’t capable of rebounding from 0-3, it’s that the competition stacks up against them almost too much. For a good season to come together there is always the necessity for some luck to be involved. This seasons isn’t looking too lucky. In fact, I remember when I first looked at this schedule I thought “the Saints better start 3-0 because it gets really scary after that”. Well, so much for that. I’ll tell you this much, if the Saints don’t play better defensively than they did the first two weeks, they’ll be lucky to win 3 games with this schedule. 0-2 is in the rear view and there’s nothing to be done with that anymore. It all starts with the Chiefs on Sunday, where a win is needed in the most desperate of ways. For 2012 to have any shot, this game is a must win.