Less than a day after the music stopped in Club Dub and the imaginary confetti mentally had been swept up, the New Orleans Saints flipped the page to addressing the areas that prevented a dominant, 47-10 victory over Carolina in the season opener at the Caesars Superdome from being even more thorough.
"I thought the execution overall was pretty good," Coach Dennis Allen said Monday. "But in a game that plays out differently, in a tighter game, some of these mistakes certainly could hurt you.
"We dropped coverage on a quarterback scramble one time and gave up an explosive play. We missed a couple of opportunities potentially for some big plays offensively. We had a big return on the opening kickoff (officially 33 yards by Rashid Shaheed, during which the Saints drew a holding penalty) that had a chance to be a really big play and I felt like we left a lot of yards on the table in the return game.
"There's certainly a lot of things that we've got to clean up but in terms of just a first game out and from an execution standpoint, I felt like all three phases executed at a pretty high level."
The Saints allowed one sack, ran for 180 yards and two touchdowns on 37 carries, averaged 6.1 yards per play, forced three turnovers, produced four sacks, held the Panthers to 193 yards, had kickoff returns of 33 and 32 yards and a punt return of 47, and Blake Grupe was good on all four field-goal attempts.
On Monday, it all went in a scrapbook, to be enjoyed again later.
"It's one of 17 (games), we haven't accomplished anything," Allen said. "So let's just put our head down and focus. The same thing that we did to get ready for Carolina in terms of our preparation – mentally, physically, emotionally – put our head down and go to work.
"I told the team there's a lot of people outside the building that didn't think we were capable of doing much. Those same people are probably saying a lot of great things about you today, but were saying a lot of negative things about you before yesterday's game.
"We try not to pay much attention to that. We try to just focus on what our job is, what we need to do and how we can get better. And we know that we're going to have an extremely tough challenge this Sunday going to Dallas."
