Fined $500K, Shut Out 34-0, Then Beating the Brawlers: The Saints' Rollercoaster Preseason Finish

No NFL team had a more eventful final stretch of camp than the New Orleans Saints—and no team proved more resilient.

It started with fireworks. During a joint practice on Tuesday, the Saints and Dallas Cowboys engaged in roughly eight separate fights, prompting the NFL to fine each franchise $500,000. The league's Competition Committee had made sportsmanship at joint practices a point of emphasis, and both teams paid the price—a steep financial lesson.

Then came the hangover. On Aug. 22, New Orleans traveled to SoFi Stadium and was blanked 34-0 by the Los Angeles Rams—a demoralizing preseason shutout that sent the fanbase spiraling. Reports from the game highlighted a few individual standouts, but the top-line takeaway was grim: the offense generated nothing, the defense was carved up, and the Saints looked like a team that had left its fight in the previous week's practice brawls.

And then, the turnaround. On Aug. 29, the Saints walked into AT&T Stadium and beat the Cowboys 27-24 to close the preseason with a win. The response mattered as much as the result. After getting fined, humiliated on national television, and questioned all week, New Orleans bounced back on the road against a rival it had brawled with. That's a resilience marker that carries into the regular season.

But the 34-0 scoreline lingers. The Week 2 preseason unit—led largely by backup quarterback Zach Wilson—failed to score a single point. That performance, combined with the running back room's uncertainty, is worth monitoring. Alvin Kamara appears on the depth chart behind new acquisition Travis Etienne Jr., and Kamara popped up repeatedly on the injury report with ankle, knee, and illness designations, including some "Did Not Participate" marks. For a team hoping to make noise in the NFC South, Kamara's availability is a storyline that won't go away.

The bigger picture, though, is brighter. Quarterback Tyler Shough, the franchise's chosen leader after Derek Carr's 2025 retirement, heads into his first full season as QB1 with momentum. Shough threw for 2,384 yards, 10 touchdowns, and just six interceptions across 17 games in 2025 after taking over midseason, and his emergence has fueled legitimate speculation that New Orleans could flip from worst to first in the NFC South. Multiple outlets named the Saints as the most likely team to do exactly that, and the roster's youth movement—headlined by players like Kaden Elliss, whom NFL experts rank as the team's best player—supports the optimism.

The final week of preseason gave Saints fans a taste of everything: chaos, embarrassment, and a rebound. It ended with a win, but the questions—Can the offense recover from the shutout? Can Kamara stay healthy? Can Shough deliver on the hype?—follow the team into Week 1 at Detroit on Sept. 13. For a franchise that has been picking at the bottom of its division, the answers start there.