The Saints came within one play of pulling off a comeback that would have matched the biggest in franchise history, but overtime turned into heartbreak in Detroit.
New Orleans erased a 21-point hole, fought all the way back to force overtime, then watched the Lions escape with a 31-30 win after the Saints’ two-point try failed. Kellen Moore made the aggressive call to go for the win rather than settle for a tie, and Tyler Shough’s pass to Bryce Lance sailed out of bounds to end it.
The finish stung because the Saints had already done so much work to get back in it. After Detroit opened up a 21-0 lead, New Orleans started chipping away late. Kendre Miller got the rally moving with a red-zone touchdown, then Shough helped the Saints keep climbing with a 54-yard drive finished by a short scoring pass to Devaughn Vele.
From there, the pressure kept building on Detroit. The teams traded field goals to make it 24-17, and then the Saints delivered the punch that tied it late in the fourth quarter. Chris Olave’s deep catch set up another Shough strike, this one to Juwan Johnson, and suddenly the game was level.
New Orleans even had one more shot before regulation ended, but Daniel Carlson’s field goal missed. That opened the door to overtime, where the Saints answered a Lions touchdown with one of their own. Shough connected with Johnson to get the offense close, then found Noah Fant in the end zone to pull within one.
That left Moore with the decision that decided the game. He stuck with the plan to go for two, and the conversion came up empty.
Had the Saints finished the job, it would have tied the largest comeback win in team history. New Orleans has come back from 21 down to win three times before: the 46-34 win over the Dolphins on October 25, 2009, the 41-24 win over the Bengals on December 20, 1987, and the 43-38 win over the 49ers on November 23, 1969.
Instead, the Saints fell just short in what would have been the lowest-scoring of those four 21-point comebacks.
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