The Saints played like they wanted coach Dennis Allen fired

Yes. Former NFL cornerback Richard Sherman didn’t hold back on Amazon Prime’s halftime show during “Thursday Night Football” after watching the New Orleans Saints fall to a 16-3 deficit.

He particularly took aim at the poor performance of the Saints defense, even going so far as to suggest that the unit’s poor performance was due to head coach Dennis Allen wanting to be fired.

“I’m telling you, Tony, I’m confused, I’m upset, I’m perplexed, I don’t understand. They’re good players,” Sherman said. “They don’t want to attack, they don’t want to make plays. … I don’t understand it, it seems like they want to fire their coach, that’s the effort they’re playing with.”

Sherman pointed to an uncharacteristic drop interception by Tyrann Mathieu as an example. Mathieu could have grabbed his 36th career pick when Bo Nix threw it right to him, but the veteran safety lost his footing and the pass was incomplete. Mathieu would also have had a lot of leeway.

There were other errors. Lots of missed tackles, including some bad hits from Ironman linebacker Demario Davis and a couple of fast sacks that eluded Chase Young and Johnathan Abram. These are all problems that we have been seeing for a month with the last four defeats. They can’t stop the run, allowing 6 or more yards per carry in three of their last four games and giving up more than 130 yards and two scores in the one outlier.

For a coach lauded for his defensive experience, it was Dennis Allen’s side that strayed from their fundamentals. And respected voices in the league’s media landscape like Sherman are taking notice.