New Orleans Saints<\/a> 21-17 on Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.<\/p>\nThe loss was the second consecutive for the Saints, who fell to 2-10 on the season.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what we learned from the game:<\/p>\n
The Saints showed fight<\/p>\n
The team easily could have quit after the Dolphins took a 16-0 halftime lead, but the Saints dominated the second half and put a huge scare into the home team.<\/p>\n
After a leaky first half, the Saints held the Dolphins to just five points in the second half, allowing the team to fight into contention and come within a two-point conversion of tying the game in the final minutes.<\/p>\n
Alas, the Saints\u2019 faulty execution derailed the comeback. A false start penalty on Taliese Fuaga led to a disastrous pick two by Minkah Fitzpatrick on the ensuing conversion try, accounting for the final score.<\/p>\n
The Saints had one last try after Vele recovered a beautifully executed onside kick by Charlie Smyth, but they failed to convert a fourth-and-1 at the Dolphins\u2019 36-yard line in the final minute, ending the comeback attempt.<\/p>\n
Still, it was a valiant comeback effort, a good sign for a team that has little to play for other than pride.<\/p>\n
The slow starts continued<\/p>\n
The Saints once again found themselves playing catch-up. They failed to gain a first down and went scoreless in their three first-quarter possessions. Meanwhile, Miami marched for a touchdown on its opening series to take a quick 7-0 lead and added a field goal on the first play of the second quarter. From there, it was another uphill climb.<\/p>\n
The Saints have now scored just one touchdown in 27 first-quarter drives this season. As a result, they have been outscored 92-19 in the opening period.<\/p>\n
It was the ninth time in 12 games that the Saints failed to lead for a single minute.<\/p>\n
Smyth and Vele were bright spots<\/p>\n
If you were looking for a silver lining to the loss, look no farther than second-year players Charlie Smyth and Devaughn Vele.<\/p>\n
Smyth, the kicker from Northern Ireland, was making his NFL debut after the Saints released Blake Grupe earlier in the week. He opened eyes in his official NFL debut by booming a 56-yard field goal in the first attempt of his career.<\/p>\n
Smyth also performed a perfect onside kick in the final 2 minutes that Vele recovered to give the Saints a final shot to get the win.<\/p>\n
Vele, meanwhile, had a breakout game with eight catches for 93 yards, including a spectacular 15-yard touchdown catch to pull the Saints within two points late.<\/p>\n
After a quiet start to his Saints career, the towering 6-foot-4 wide receiver finally showed why team officials traded a fourth-round draft pick to acquire him during training camp. He made several acrobatic and contested catches in traffic, many on in-breaking routes over the middle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Orleans Saints place kicker Charlie Smyth (39) kicks a field goal during the second half of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8434,123,125,124,38857],"class_list":["post-65951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-hardwall","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-saints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}