Carr’s return to the Saints’ lineup is devastating because he loses his main goal, the game and his coach

Derek Carr’s return to the New Orleans Saints starting lineup couldn’t have gone much worse.

He lost his main target to a concussion when are pass over the middle sailed over his receiver. He lost to the worst team in the league and he became the first NFL quarterback to lose to 31 teams.

A day later, he lost his head coach.

These are certainly not the saints of Sean Payton and Drew Brees. But Carr and Dennis Allen quickly raised hopes of parading another Lombardi Trophy down Bourbon Street as the Saints totaled 91 points in back-to-back blowouts of Carolina and Dallas to start the season.

They scored on their first nine possessions in a 47-10 defeat of the Panthers in the opener, only to top that a week later at Jerry World when they reached the end zone on their first six drives in a 44-19 jaw dropper against the Cowboys.

Those were heady times – and, as it turned out, transient.

The Saints have lost seven straight games since Week 2 due to a series of injuries, including a strained oblique that sidelined Carr for three weeks.

Four of those losses were by double digits, including a 33-10 Thursday night Payton screeched and his new team, the resurgent Denver Broncos.

The costliest loss was the Saints’ 23-22 loss in Charlotte on Sunday, when Carr couldn’t lead his team into field goal range in the final minute and the Saints left town with the same 2-7 record as the Panthers, a team that is statistically terrible and historically bad.

So Dennis Allen, who was fired by the then-Oakland Raiders earlier in 2014, on Monday became the first coach in NFL history to be fired twice with the same quarterback starting both teams.

In a written statement from the team, Allen thanked team owner Gayle Benson and general manager Mickey Loomis for his opportunity, saying, “I’m sorry the results weren’t better as they were certainly deserved.”

Allen is the second NFL coach to be fired midseason in 2024. Jeff Ulbrich replaced Robert Saleh as interim coach after the Jets’ 2-3 start and it took him a month to get his first win.

The caretaker in New Orleans is Darren Rizzi, who gets the Browns (2-7) at home in two weeks and the Giants (2-7) on the road in four weeks, but he inherited a beat-up team and an eviscerated quarterback by former teammate Michael Thomas on social media following wide receiver Chris Olave’s concussion on Sunday.

As he cut up the middle and reached for Carr’s errant pass, Olave was sandwiched by safety Xavier Woods and cornerback Dane Jackson. While Woods was flagged for unnecessary roughness, Olave remained on the court for several minutes and was attended to by trainers as the crowd fell silent and players from both teams gathered around him. He was eventually placed on a board and taken to a hospital by ambulance.

Thomas immediately lambasted Carr on social media, saying Carr has a tendency to “just panic and throw the ball.” He also posted another message on X suggesting Carr should be fined for throwing a “hospital pass.”

Carr spoke for more than four minutes about Thomas’ comments after the game.

“I have a pit in my stomach every time one of my teammates goes down because I love them so much,” Carr said. “It doesn’t matter if I like them or not, and I happen to love Chris Olave. We have a great relationship. I hate it, and I don’t like to use that word often, but I hate moments like this.

Carr said Thomas, who has previously criticized Carr on social media, appears to be the only teammate who can’t get along with him in the NFL.

“I don’t know what I did to him,” Carr said. ‘I don’t know why he feels that way. I’m sorry that everything he’s dealing with makes him feel like he has to. But he never called me through all of this. My phone number has never changed. I even called him several times to try. Sometimes you can try as hard as you want, but it won’t work. And that’s okay. …But I wish him the best. I hope he gets on a team and does what he wants to do and enjoys it.”

Woods said after the match that he didn’t think it was a malicious hit, but the officials told him he was being punished for hitting Olave in the head. “It was nothing dirty on my part, I was just playing football,” Woods said.

Entering the weekend, Carr was one of 10 QBs to lose to 30 different teams, a club that also includes Brees, Brett Favre, Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan. Now Carr stands alone as the only QB to lose to 31 teams.

The only team he hasn’t lost to is his old team, the Raiders, who host the Saints on December 29.

Kelce’s apology

Another mea culpa came when former Eagles center Jason Kelce began ESPN’s broadcast of “Monday Night Countdown” by acknowledging that he should not have returned an anti-gay slur to a Penn State football fan who harassed him Saturday about his brother Travis, who is in a relationship with Taylor Swift.

“In a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate,” Jason Kelce said. “And I don’t think that’s productive.”

Regrettable decisions

What happened to the axiom that you play for a draw at home and a win on the road?

The Buccaneers lost 30-24 in Kansas City in overtime Monday night after Tampa Bay coach Todd Bowles decided to go for the tie instead of the win following Baker Mayfield’s touchdown throw with 27 seconds left in regulation time.

The Bucs were the third team to lose in Week 9 after scoring the tying extra point on a TD in the final minute of regulation. The others were the Patriots in Tennessee and the Seahawks at home against the Rams.

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AP Pro Football Writer Josh Dubow in San Francisco and AP Sports Writers Steve Reed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Brett Martel in New Orleans contributed to this report.

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