Like a bad apple, candy corn, or another Halloween or Friday the 13th remake, the New Orleans Saints ruined Halloween. Unlike the ghouls, ghosts and spooky monsters of the season, these Saints have created their own tricks and terrors.

New Orleans came out of the gate stronger than even their most die-hard fans could have imagined. They started with a 2-0 record, defeating the Carolina Panthers and Dallas Cowboys by a combined score of 91-29. As the autumn leaves began to turn yellow, the team’s fortunes changed.

Mistakes late in the fourth quarter cost the Saints two games they could have won in the final minute against Philadelphia and Atlanta. Those losses dropped the Saints to 2-2 to close out September. Changing the calendar to October caused even more problems for the Saints.

Injuries hit the New Orleans roster like a zombie apocalypse in October.

Beginning in late September, the Saints lost Derek Carr, Taysom Hill, Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, Erik McCoy, Cesar Ruiz, Lucas Patrick, Demario Davis, Pete Werner, Paulson Adebo and Will Harris at intervals. Shaheed and Adebo remain sidelined this year, while McCoy will remain on injured reserve.

The offensive core and mostly awful defense made the Saints look like helpless victims in a horror movie. New Orleans lost all four of its games in October. They averaged a meager 14.5 points in those four games and gave up a terrible average of 34 points.

Similar to incompetent leadership figures in horror movies, the New Orleans coaches were equally clueless about stopping rapidly falling momentum. The Saints are consistently starved of coaching week after week. But the team’s front office refuses to consider the changes, stubbornly believing that everything is fine while the world is falling apart.

Once upon a time, New Orleans terrorized the rest of the NFL through Halloween until at least Thanksgiving. During 15 years under Sean Payton, the Saints went 46-15 in October, posting a .754 winning percentage. Even in the worst four years of the Drew Brees/Sean Payton era (2012, ’14, ’15 and ’16), the Saints went 11-4 with a .733 winning percentage in October.

Between 2011 and 2021, New Orleans was 33-8 in October. Fall and Halloween were particularly good between 2014 and 2021. The Saints were 26-4 in that span in October, including an incredible 20-2 between 2016 and 2021.

Saying that Dennis Allen’s Saints struggled in October is like saying Michael Myers has a slight anger problem. Including this season, New Orleans has a nightmare record of 4-10 in October under Allen.

What this basically means is that the Saints often took control of the NFC South under Payton. At least they have positioned themselves very well for the play-off race. During three years under Allen, New Orleans put themselves in a position where they would need outside help to get back to postseason chances before Thanksgiving approached.

To add insult to injury, Sean Payton returned to New Orleans this October and basically played the role of Freddy Krueger. Payton’s Denver Broncos defeated the Saints by a score of 33-10 in front of their home fans in a prime time game on Thursday night.

New Orleans, currently 2-6 and on a six-game losing streak, has two marquee games in back-to-back weeks against NFC South rivals Carolina and Atlanta. The slightest hope they have of salvaging the season must start with winning both games.

Mathematically, New Orleans can get back into the division race by winning at least these two games and getting some outside help. They’ve certainly dug their own graves, but they’re also nursing some of their players back to health.

Trusting that this will happen can be a very different fairy tale. Prior to this season’s nightmare, the Saints were a disastrous 6-15 under Dennis Allen between Weeks 3 and 13, before falling to 6-21 in this year’s disaster.

New Orleans first needs to win against the 1-7 Carolina Panthers this Sunday. They hope to surpass this year’s October horror movie. To do this they will also need to turn around their struggling performances on the pitch and overcome their recent nightmare history.