Two weeks into the NFL season, the New Orleans Saints looked like one of the best teams in the league. Not only were they 2-0, but they had won both of their games by more than 20 points.
Five weeks later, their season has turned into an unmitigated disaster. The Saints' latest setback came on Thursday night with a 33-10 loss to the Denver Broncos. With the 23-point defeat, the Saints matched a futile record that had only been pulled off by one other team in NFL history.
New Orleans is now just the second team to open the season with two wins by 20 points or more, only to immediately follow up their 2-0 start with a five-game losing streak. The only other time that happened came in 1965 when the Dallas Cowboys also started hot before falling apart.
During the 1965 season, here's how the Cowboys opened the year:
Week 1: Cowboys 31-2 over Giants
Week 2: Cowboys 27-7 over Washington
After those two wins, the Cowboys would lose five straight. Although they dropped to 2-5, that team did rebound to go 5-2 over the final seven weeks to finish with a 7-7 record.
On the Saints' end, here's what the first two weeks looked like for them:
Week 1: Saints 47-10 over Panthers
Week 2: Saints 44-19 over Cowboys
Since those two wins, the Saints have lost to the Eagles, Falcons, Chiefs, Buccaneers and Broncos. Although the Cowboys bounced back to finish at .500 in 1965, that's not going to be so easy for the Saints. The team is currently being ravaged by injuries. Not only has Derek Carr has missed two straight games, but Rashid Shaheed, Chris Olave, Cesar Ruiz and Taysom Hill all missed Thursday's game (Shaheed is out for the season).
Things have been so bad that New Orleans doesn't even have a home-field advantage anymore. When you combine their 23-point loss to Denver on Thursday with their 51-27 loss to the Buccaneers in Week 6, the Saints have now lost two straight homes games by at least 21 points for the first time since 2001.