The New England Patriots play the New Orleans Saints on Saturday for preseason week 2. My old college friend and roommate, Dave Archibald, a lifelong Pats fan who contributes to Inside the Pylon, reached out to me, a lifelong Saints fan, for a Q&A session about the teams and what to watch for beforehand.
My answers on the Saints have gone live on ITP. Dave’s answers on the Patriots will run on our site tomorrow.
The Saints lost to the Rams 27-16 in St. Louis on Sunday, in a game in which starting tackle Charles Brown was repeatedly abused by All-Galaxy defensive end Robert Quinn, and where kicker Garrett Hartley had a 39-yard field goal blocked because he hit it low and shanked a 29-yarder late in the game to abort the Saints’ comeback attempt.
When I first drafted this post, I titled it “Do the Saints need to make personnel changes?” and intended to address what they might do about Brown and Hartley, but then head coach Sean Payton announced that said changes were coming, and subsequently benched Brown for rookie Terron Armstead and waived Hartley, signing veteran Shayne Graham the next day.
So instead, I’ll look at why these changes happened and what we might expect from the new guys.
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