New Orleans enters year two of the Kellen Moore era with a real question to answer: was last year’s late-season surge a genuine building block, or just a soft schedule showing up at the right time? Our team dug into the roster moves and the slate ahead to find out.
2025 Season Recap
The Saints finished 2025 at 6-11, last in the NFC South, but the record undersells how strange the season actually was. New Orleans opened 2-10 through 13 games — its worst start since 1999 — before ripping off four straight wins in December to close the year out. By the time that streak arrived, the Saints had already been eliminated from playoff contention for a fifth consecutive season. Division rival Atlanta was the one team New Orleans couldn’t solve, sweeping the season series for the first time since 2016 with a Week 18 loss that closed out the year.
The year doubled as a full quarterback transition. Spencer Rattler opened the season under center before second-round rookie Tyler Shough took over midseason and closed strong, ranking among the top 10 quarterbacks in the league over the final five weeks as the Saints went 4-1. Utility man Taysom Hill added a genuine piece of NFL history along the way, becoming the first player in the Super Bowl era to reach 1,000-plus career yards passing, rushing, and receiving.
Offseason Moves
There was no coaching search this offseason — that overhaul already happened last year, when the Saints hired Kellen Moore off the Eagles’ Super Bowl-winning staff to be their head coach and brought in former Chargers head coach Brandon Staley as defensive coordinator. Staley’s unit already graded out in the top half of the league in DVOA in year one, so continuity is the story on that side of the roster this time around.
The bigger changes came in personnel. New Orleans lost veteran linebacker Demario Davis to the Jets and cornerback Alontae Taylor to Tennessee on a three-year, $58 million deal, both real losses on defense. To offset that, the Saints went to work on offense: guard David Edwards, a Super Bowl champion with the Rams, signed a four-year, $61 million contract after a stint in Buffalo, running back Travis Etienne joined on a four-year, $52 million deal to pair with Alvin Kamara, and tight end Noah Fant arrived from Cincinnati. Linebacker Kaden Elliss was re-signed after a stop in Atlanta. Cameron Jordan, now 37, agreed to a one-year, incentive-laden deal that he’s already said will be his last — both he and Kamara reaffirmed their commitment to finishing their careers in New Orleans as camp opened. Taysom Hill’s situation is the one loose thread: he left in free agency without a deal in hand, and a reunion with former Saints coach Sean Payton in Denver has been floated, though nothing is finalized.
In the draft, the Saints leaned hard into weapons for Shough, using their first-round pick (No. 8 overall) on Arizona State receiver Jordyn Tyson, then adding Georgia defensive tackle Christen Miller in round two and Georgia tight end Oscar Delp in round three. The later rounds brought guard Jeremiah Wright (Auburn), receiver Bryce Lance (North Dakota State), safety Lorenzo Styles Jr. (Ohio State), receiver Barion Brown (LSU), and cornerback TJ Hall Jr. (Iowa) — eight picks in all, with a clear emphasis on giving the second-year quarterback more to work with.
2026 Season Outlook
The schedule is arguably New Orleans’ best asset heading into the year. Independent projections have the Saints with the second-easiest strength of schedule in the NFL, and they’re the only team in a division that includes the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers that grades out easier than average. That said, the opening stretch is brutal on paper — a Week 1 trip to Detroit followed immediately by a Week 2 visit to Baltimore — before the schedule turns friendlier with a home opener against the Raiders and a Monday night divisional matchup with Atlanta. A Week 7 international game against Pittsburgh in Paris precedes the Week 8 bye, and the toughest late-season gauntlet comes in Weeks 11-12 with back-to-back road games at Chicago and Cincinnati.
Our Team’s Projection
We’re projecting the Saints to finish 8-9 in 2026. New Orleans’ season win total opened at 7.5 at DraftKings, and our number leans toward the over.
The case for the over starts with continuity and schedule shape: Shough gets a full offseason as the starter, the offense added real playmaking talent in Etienne, Fant, and Tyson, and a favorable slate gives this team more winnable games than last year’s group had. The case for the under is just as real, though — New Orleans’ four-game winning streak to close 2025 came against Tampa Bay, Carolina, the Jets, and Tennessee, all of whom finished the year under .500, so it’s fair to ask whether this offense has proven it can beat good teams before betting on it to do so more often. Losing Davis and Taylor also leaves real questions on defense that a strong 2025 DVOA number doesn’t fully answer. Win total bets like this one live and die on exactly this kind of matchup-by-matchup reasoning, and it’s a topic our team plans to cover in more depth in a future Bet Smarter breakdown on how season win-total betting actually works.