The New Orleans Saints are struggling with a 2-5 start in the 2026 season. According to former Saints safety Tyrann Mathieu, there’s a slight disconnect between head coach Kellen Moore and the offense shown by Tyler Shough and Co.

“I’m looking at the Saints, and I’m hesitant to say it in this manner, because I played the sport and I got so much respect for it, but I don’t think those boys are really going out there and playing as hard as they can for Kellen Moore,” Mathieu said on the In The Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu podcast. “I really don’t see it.

“You kinda see it in spurts, where maybe somebody make a play here and there. But that extra effort, like that diving on the ball for a look, diving on the ground for a loose ball, every inch, every blade of grass, from a defensive perspective, you just don’t see it enough. I don’t know if I’m just being critical of them from what I was seeing. But it just doesn’t feel like a team that has a bunch of enthusiasm.”

The Saints showed a poor ground game in their Week 7 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. They rushed for only 18 yards while covering 263 passing yards. Meanwhile, the defense allowed the Steelers 148 rushing yards.

Even Moore acknowledged that “it’s going to be hard to win football games” with 17 runs for 18 yards.

In the Week 7 game, Tyler Shough gained 278 passing yards and just seven rushing yards. In the previous week (against the Giants), the quarterback recorded 144 passing yards and 32 rushing yards. But the worst came in the game against the Vikings. There, he threw for only 96 yards and made no rushing attempts. Yet, according to Moore, it isn’t all because of Shough’s shortcomings.

“You could say that about any quarterback,” Moore said in Shough’s defense. “Any quarterback gets to team up with the run game, it just allows the mixed downs to look better, less obvious pass situations, and that’s certainly something we have to address.”

But things are destined to change if the Saints continue to showcase a similar output going forward. And Moore claimed that the changes might begin with the coaching staff.

“They’ll evaluate if staff changes are needed but not jumping in,” Moore said as per Saints insider Nick Underhill. “We’re all frustrated. You’ve gotta take the emotion out of it and truly just evaluate it, and find what the next steps are.”

Nevertheless, the Saints head coach knows that the team must take advantage of the bye week. According to him, these weeks give the players a chance to slow down a bit to evaluate their standings with less emotion interfering with their judgment. Moore said that there are “great growth opportunities” for the Saints. Of course, the Saints did bounce back and went 4-3 after entering their bye week with a 2-8 record in 2025. Similar expectations will be with this 2026 team.

With the ground game completely stalled and staff changes potentially looming, New Orleans must use its bye week to spark a turnaround before the season slips away.

The post “I Really Don’t See It”: Ex-Saints Star Questions Tyler Shough & Co.’s Commitment to Kellen Moore Amid 2-5 Start appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.