Thoughts on the New Orleans Saints’ 30-27 victory against the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium:

What it means: The gap in competitive balance between the top and bottom of the NFC South has narrowed. The gap in the standings has not. As they’ve been doing most of the season, the Panthers kept things very close. They played a New Orleans team that’s been to the playoffs the past two seasons very tightly. But, ultimately, Drew Brees and the Saints rallied to score (on a touchdown pass to Pierre Thomas) with 50 seconds remaining. That puts the Saints at 4-1 and, depending on how Tampa Bay does in its later game at San Francisco, no worse than a share of first place in the division. The Panthers are much improved and there’s little doubt they’ll pull off some upsets later in the year. But the bottom line is Carolina is 1-4.

Read the rest of Pat’s story here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 5:20 pm and is filed under National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.