Kendre Miller’s latest minor setback was enough to send Saints fans right back into familiar territory.
Miller left Tuesday’s practice under his own power, but he was not on the field for the New Orleans Saints’ Wednesday session. Kellen Moore said the issue was minor, yet that did little to calm the unease surrounding the running back, whose career has too often been defined by the same frustrating pattern.
This is the part Saints fans know by heart: Miller flashes real talent, then something interrupts the momentum. The details may change, but the storyline has stayed the same over the last four years. He keeps getting knocked off track, and the concern isn’t just the injury itself - it’s how often he seems to end up banged up.
Moore said Miller walked out of the last preseason game banged up, and that’s exactly the kind of update that keeps raising alarms. The bigger issue is not whether Miller can take a hit. It’s whether he can keep from missing practice time after it happens.
The timing makes it even more important. The Saints are a week away from game week, and with this kind of schedule, Miller would probably be entering a Sunday matchup as questionable. He had something bothering him after Friday’s game, tried to get back on the field a few days later, and then had to sit out Wednesday.
Under a normal weekly rhythm, Wednesday would line up with a Friday practice. Miss that one, and a player starts looking firmly questionable for the next game. Even now, Miller’s status is something the team will have to monitor next week.
That matters because Alvin Kamara may miss the first two games, which would push Miller into the RB2 role. That raises the stakes immediately. The Saints need him to be dependable, and in football, the biggest part of dependability is simply being there.
It also makes the constant uncertainty harder to ignore. Every time Miller’s availability comes into question, it becomes tougher to get excited about what he can bring to the offense. The Saints want him to complement Travis Etienne, but the conversation keeps circling back to whether he’ll be healthy enough to do it.
There was some reason for optimism when Miller bounced back quickly after an injury in camp, missing the preseason opener and then returning. That kind of recovery is better than what Saints fans have seen before. But the margin for error is small, and his opportunity could be only two weeks long.
If he misses even one game, that could cut his chance to make a statement in half. That’s where the urgency comes from now.
Just as excitement started to build around Miller again, another minor injury put everything back in doubt. And for Saints fans, that means holding their breath all over again.
In Other News...
Saints Keep Tweaking Roster With One Late Move Worth Watching
The Saints have kept the roster churn going in the lead-up to the 2025 season kickoff, adding wide receiver Kevin Austin Jr. and tight end Treyton Welch to the practice squad while also claiming cornerback Decamerion Richardson off waivers from the Las Vegas Raiders. It is the kind of late-August business that can look minor on paper but often says plenty about how a team wants to stock the back end of its roster and what it values in terms of depth and upside.
Richardson arrives at a position group that always draws attention in New Orleans, and his addition came at a cost, with rookie Lorenzo Styles Jr. going on injured reserve to clear a spot. The Saints have already shown they are willing to keep adjusting as they sort through the final layers of the roster, and this latest move is one worth watching as they continue to shape the defensive backfield and the rest of the practice squad. [Read more 🡒]
Saints Quarterback Future Just Became The NFC South's Biggest Debate
The NFC South has become a division built on uncertainty, and the Saints are right in the middle of it. Carolina won the crown in 2025 despite an 8-9 record and a minus-69 point differential, a reminder that no team in the group has really separated itself. CBS Sports even slotted all four clubs into the same tier in its power rankings, which only reinforces how wide open, and how unimpressive, the race has looked heading into the next round of roster decisions.
For New Orleans, the biggest question sits at quarterback, where the future remains one of the defining debates in the division. With each NFC South team dealing with its own set of roster issues, the Saints do not have the luxury of leaning on a clearly settled outlook, and that makes the position especially important as they try to find a path back to the top. In a division this bunched together, the answer under center could end up mattering more than anything else. [Read more 🡒]
Saints Week 3 Matchup Just Got A Lot More Uncomfortable
The Saints Week 3 trip to Las Vegas is shaping up as a much different test than it looked a few weeks ago. Klint Kubiak has named Kirk Cousins the Raiders starter for Week 1, which means New Orleans is now likely preparing for a veteran quarterback rather than rookie Fernando Mendoza when the teams meet.
That matters because Cousins brings a familiar kind of stress for a defense, even with an uneven track record against New Orleans. Mendoza would have offered the Saints a far more forgiving assignment, with the usual rookie mistakes likely part of the package, but now the margin for error shrinks and the game plan gets a lot more complicated. [Read more 🡒]