Weary Saints urgently trying to end their 4-game slide on a short week

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Weary Saints urgently trying to end their 4-game slide on a short week

2024-10-15 05:26 Last Updated At：05:30

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans Saints have been on a downward slide for about a month now.

Injuries haven’t helped, but a four-game losing streak has coaches reexamining and reevaluating almost everything.

“Everybody needs to look at themselves — coaches, players, everybody — and make sure we’re doing everything we possibly can to get this thing going in the right direction,” Saints coach Dennis Allen said. “Right now, it’s not where we want it to be.”

The Saints were brimming with optimism after two head-turning, lopsided victories against Carolina and Dallas to open the season. In hindsight, however, neither of those wins look as impressive. The Panthers are 1-5 and all five of their losses have come by 10 or more points. The Cowboys are 3-3 and their 47-9 loss to Detroit on Sunday was even more-sided than their Week 2 loss to New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the Saints' past two losses haven't been close. They fell by 13 points at Kansas City and by 24 points to the Bucs.

Time will tell if this is just a rough patch or the start of a fourth straight season without a playoff berth. If it's the latter, it could spell doom for Allen, who is 18-22 since being promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach in 2022 after Sean Payton announced what turned out to be a one-year retirement.

“We're dealing with some injuries right now. We've got to fight through this rough patch and hopefully get some guys back," Allen said. “But I've got all the confidence in the world that our guys are going to stick together.”

Special teams had a good day against the Bucs, with the top highlight being Rashid Shaheed's 54-yard punt return for a touchdown. Rookie Australian punter Matthew Hayball pinned the Bucs at or inside their 10-yard line three times. Meanwhile, five of Tampa Bay's six kickoff returns were stopped inside the 30-yard line — the new starting point for offenses after touchbacks under kickoff rules adopted in the offseason.

Saints defenders need to start filling gaps, taking better angles and wrapping up if they don't want to continue to get gashed like they've been in their past two games.

Allen called the Saints' tackling “atrocious” against Tampa Bay, which broke off numerous big gains after defenders' whiffs.

It happened on Bucs receiver Chris Godwin's 55-yard touchdown, when three defenders missed him. And it happened on running back Bucky Irving's zig-zagging 31-yard scamper in the fourth quarter.

"We have to tackle better. I thought that was the biggest thing in the game,” Allen said. “It was not a good defensive performance at all. That needs to be an area that we can count on — it’s been an area we can count on, but right now it’s not.

“We’ve got to figure it out in a hurry,” Allen added.

Rookie quarterback Spencer Rattler exhibited raw ability, composure and maturity in the way he handled his first NFL start behind a banged-up offense line and without New Orleans' most accomplished receiver, Chris Olave.

Pressed into service because of an oblique injury to veteran first-stringer Derek Carr, Rattler went 22 of 40 for 243 yards, one TD and two interceptions. Those numbers weren't flashy, but they were solid in the context of the overall mismatch that played out Sunday between the Saints and Bucs.

“He did some really good things,” said Allen, who has indicated Rattler will start again this week. “He was poised, I thought he went through his progressions, I thought he was able to create some things with his feet. I thought he threw the ball well.”

Allen's defense has been considerably better than average during most of his tenure as both defensive coordinator and head coach. Now, however, the Saints rank at the bottom of the league in terms of yards allowed per game at 395.8.

“Right now, we're not playing defense the way we have and the way we're capable of,” Allen said

Olave is in the concussion protocol and safety Tyrann Mathieu has a forearm injury. New Orleans entered Sunday's game missing Carr, tight end Taysom Hill (ribs), center Erik McCoy (groin), Cesar Ruiz (knee) and guard Lucas Patrick (chest).

The concussion for Olave is of particular concern because it's his third with New Orleans in three seasons, and it didn't sound like the Saints are inclined to allow him to come back quickly.

“We've got to be certainly cautious with him in terms of when he's available and when he's ready to go,” Allen said.

594 — The number of yards allowed against Tampa Bay, second-most in Saints history. That figure is eclipsed only by the franchise-worst of 605 yards yielded to a prolific Minnesota Vikings offense led by Daunte Culpepper and Randy Moss in 2004.

The weary Saints have a short week to prepare for their third game in 11 days on Thursday night. It's also the return of Payton to the Superdome when he brings the Denver Broncos to the Big Easy on the same night that his former New Orleans QB, Drew Brees, is inducted into the Saints Hall of Fame.

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Death toll in attack on Christmas market in Germany rises to 5, with more than 200 injured

2024-12-21 19:29 Last Updated At：19:30

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them "are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.