Canal Street Chronicles
Two teams that struggled last season are looking to bounce back.
With the full New Orleans Saints 2025 schedule released, the matchups are set, and some of them are extremely exciting. This excitement could be due to rivalries or the quality of the opponent, but storylines are a main driving force when looking at these games. Yes, the easy choice of fun matchups are the NFC South games, but looking outside of those matchups, one sticks out to me: The New England Patriots in Week 6.
In recent years, the Saints have had the Patriots’ number in these games, even with New Orleans dealing with an egregious number of issues. Back in 2023, the Saints traveled to New England and won 34-0. If you recall, this was the Week 5 matchup that was expected to be the bounce-back game for the Saints' offense. At this time, Pete Carmichael was heavily scrutinized for his play calling, and this game was supposed to be the game that showed some changes to the scheme. That did happen against the Patriots, but after this game, the offense struggled mightily, and Carmichael was fired at the end of the season. Since that game, these two franchises have seen massive changes to their respective teams.
After the 2023/24 season, the Patriots selected QB Drake Maye in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. After sitting during the start of the season, Maye was finally named the starter and shined throughout the games. The Patriots roster was bad last season, and their rookie QB was really set up for failure, but he showed enough to make New England confident about the future. For the 2025 offseason, their focus was upgrading as many positions as possible and finding the franchises next head coach.
After firing Jerod Mayo at the end of his first season as head coach, the search was on for the Patriots, but it always felt like there was one real candidate: Mike Vrabel. The former Titans head coach and Patriots linebacker felt like the obvious choice and New England felt similar. Vrabel was also one of the best coaches in the NFL before getting fired from the Titans, mainly due to a strained relationship with the ownership. This hire was the perfect first step of the Patriots offseason, but next was upgrading this horrible roster. In free agency, the Patriots worked towards revamping the trenches. New England made some smaller moves on the offensive line but invested heavily on the defensive line. They made a big swing by signing top defensive tackle Milton Williams and continued with the signing of EDGE/OLB Harold Landry. Going back to offense, the Patriots also made the massive move of signing Stefon Diggs. Other smaller moves were made to upgrade the roster, but the focus can now be moved to their draft moves.
In the first round, it always felt like the Patriots would go with offensive line, and that is exactly what they did with the selection of...
