The Saints Beat Baltimore and Lost Kelvin Banks — Inside the Most Expensive Win of Their Season

For 55 minutes Sunday, the New Orleans Saints looked like the team everyone ranked near the bottom of the league. Then Tyler Shough happened. Then Kelvin Banks Jr. went down. Both developments will shape the rest of the 2026 season, and only one of them is good news.

The win that mattered

New Orleans walked into M&T Bank Stadium as an 8.5-point underdog — the line had actually moved away from the Saints from an opening 7.5 — and left with a 24-17 victory over a Baltimore team that had opened the year looking dominant. The Ravens led 17-9 in the fourth quarter. The Saints scored 15 unanswered points, capped by a Shough touchdown on a controversial quarterback sneak, and moved to 1-1.

Shough's two-game line is the story of the young season: 62-of-90 (68.9 percent) for 662 yards, four touchdowns, two interceptions and a 95.7 passer rating, plus 31 rushing yards and a score on the ground. He was sacked eight times in those two games, a sack rate of 8.2 percent, which is the obvious pressure point. The comeback was the second straight week New Orleans refused to fold — they erased a 21-0 deficit in Detroit before losing 31-30 in overtime. The Saints are now 2-0 against the spread with a plus-10.5 average margin, and they're doing it almost entirely through the air: 331 passing yards per game against just 78 on the ground.

Kamara's return was quiet, and the ground game stayed stuck

Alvin Kamara came back from the knee sprain that cost him the opener, and his workload was modest — nine carries for 15 yards, five catches for seven yards. That's a marginal impact from a player whose return was billed as pivotal, and it keeps the rushing attack the least productive part of the offense. Kamara said during the week that he was fully cleared ("I'm going, I feel great"), and Cam Jordan also returned to practice and the lineup, so the injury report was trending in the right direction — right up until the third quarter.

Banks is the real cost

Left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. was carted off after getting rolled up by Trey Hendrickson on a sack of Shough. The initial read was a high-ankle sprain. The follow-up was much worse: reports indicate the sprain is severe enough that Banks is expected to undergo surgery and is out indefinitely. Asim Richards replaced him in Baltimore. For a second-year tackle anchoring the blind side, this is the kind of injury that ripples through everything — protection, Shough's sack rate, and the willingness to push the ball downfield. The Saints also ruled out cornerback Martin Emerson with a shoulder injury in the same game.

What it means against the Raiders

The Saints host Las Vegas on Sunday in the Caesars Superdome, and they open as roughly three-point favorites with a total in the mid-40s. That's a fascinating line for a 1-1 team against a 2-0 Raiders squad averaging 26.5 points and allowing just 13.5. It suggests the market respects what New Orleans did in Baltimore — and possibly that it hasn't fully priced in what losing Banks means.

The encouraging part is that Shough has now authored fourth-quarter comebacks in back-to-back weeks, and Chris Olave is off to a 18-catch, 268-yard start as his primary target. The discouraging part is that the ground game that was supposed to support him hasn't shown up, and the man protecting his back has no timeline. The Saints proved they can win a game nobody expected them to win. Whether they can keep doing it without their left tackle is the question the next month will answer.