Sean Payton wasn't blaming anyone in particular for the Saints' embarrassing loss to the Panthers on Sunday, and he didn't want his players to leave with a feeling of befuddlement.
Instead, he wanted everyone to head into Monday's grim tape review on the same page.
"I thought it was sloppy," Payton said, via ESPN.com. "I don't know how many balls we dropped. We're jumping to catch passes we don't need to jump to catch, we should be catching them in our hands. We fumbled the ball, interception. Defensively, our tackling was awful. They were almost near 300 yards rushing. It was awful. On top of that, you can't make dumb mistakes like jump offside when a team is getting ready to punt or kick a field goal."
He added: "Those are things that are painfully obvious before you put the tape on. That's the first thing that comes to my mind."
While Payton started the news conference partly blaming himself for the loss, he was right to heave a large portion of this mess on a lack of execution. The team couldn't rush the passer against a dismal Panthers offensive line and was porous against the run. Add in the drops, the lack of a running game and the overall void of energy at home, and you have a microcosm of the NFC South in 2014.
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