The Saints will not have tight end Noah Fant for Monday Night Football.
Fant is among the team’s inactives.
He was questionable to play with an abdominal injury.
Rookie Oscar Delp should see more snaps behind starter Juwan Johnson.
The Saints’ other inactives are quarterback Zach Wilson, cornerback Decamerion Richardson (shoulder), edge rusher Anfernee Jennings (knee), defensive lineman Christen Miller (toe), linebacker Kaden Elliss (calf) and edge rusher Carl Granderson (ankle). Wilson is the emergency third quarterback.
The Falcons will have linebacker Divine Deablo and edge rusher Samson Ebukam. Both were questionable with hamstring injuries.
The Falcons’ inactives are quarterback Cooper Rush, quarterback Jack Strand, offensive tackle Ethan Onianwa, defensive lineman Jared Ivey, cornerback Robert Longerbeam and cornerback Malcolm DeWalt IV. Rush will serve as the emergency third quarterback.
Saints Clips
The Falcons elevated safety Jammie Robinson to the active roster for Monday Night Football.
It makes Robinson eligible to play against the Saints as long as he is not inactive.
Robinson, 25, entered the league as a Panthers’ fifth-round pick in 2023. He spent time on the Falcons’ practice squad last season and appeared in six games, seeing action on 121 special teams snaps.
He has played 27 games with two starts in his career.
Robinson has 21 career tackles.
The Saints are dealing with several injuries at linebacker, so they brought a pair of healthy ones up from the practice squad for Monday night’s game against the Falcons.
They announced that they have elevated Fadil Diggs and Jackson Sirmon on Monday afternoon. Both players will revert back to the practice squad after the game.
Kaden Elliss, Carl Granderson, and Anfernee Jennings were all ruled out on the team’s final injury report. Pete Werner is listed as questionable to play due to a shoulder injury.
Diggs was a 2025 seventh-round pick and he played in five games during his rookie season. Sirmon played in one game for the Jets last season and joined the Saints in the offseason.
The Saints will face the Falcons without first-round pick Jordyn Tyson on Monday night and it will reportedly be a little while longer before the wideout makes his NFL debut.
Tyson is on injured reserve due to a hamstring injury and is eligible to return as soon as Week 5, but Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Tyson is still weeks away from returning to action. Per the report, Week 7 currently looks like the earliest point when Tyson would be back in the lineup.
New Orleans will in Paris to face the Steelers that week and they have a bye in Week 8, so a Week 9 return against the Browns could wind up being a more realistic target for Tyson’s first game as a Saint.
Chris Olave and Devaughn Vele have been the top receivers for the Saints so far this season. They’ll try to get the Saints to 2-2 at the Superdome on Monday.
Linebacker Kaden Elliss moved from the Falcons to the Saints as a free agent this offseason, but he won’t be playing against his former team on Monday night.
Elliss was ruled out on Saturday after missing practice all week with a calf injury. Elliss, who spent three seasons with the Falcons after opening his career with the Saints, has 24 tackles this season.
The Saints will be down two starting linebackers as they also ruled out Carl Granderson (ankle) and they could be missing a third. Pete Werner is questionable with a shoulder injury. Neither Granderson nor Werner practiced at all this week.
Reserve linebacker Anfernee Jennings (knee) is also out and tight end Noah Fant (abdomen) joins Werner with a questionable tag.
The Falcons have released their final injury report for Monday night’s game in New Orleans and it includes three of the team’s linebackers.
Divine Deablo and Samson Ebukam were limited participants in practice all week and both of them have been listed as questionable to play against the Saints. Both players are dealing with hamstring injuries.
Deablo has 11 tackles and a fumble recovery in three starts this season while Ebukam had three tackles and a half-sack in the first two weeks of the season. He did not play in last week’s win over the Packers.
Yasir Abdullah (illness) is also questionable. He was a full participant on Saturday.
Falcons defensive end Samson Ebukam remained limited in Friday’s practice ahead of Monday night’s game against the Saints.
Ebukam injured his hamstring in the Week 2 loss to the Panthers and missed the Week 3 win over the Packers.
Linebacker Divine Deablo was also limited for a second day with a hamstring injury, but he has not missed any game action this season. He played every snap for Atlanta’s defense against Green Bay.
The Falcons added rookie linebacker Kendal Daniels to the injury report as a limited participant. He is managing his Achilles injury, which cost him practice time this summer.
Defensive end Za’Darius Smith returned to limited work after a rest day on Thursday.
Saints head coach Kellen Moore said earlier this week that running back Travis Etienne would miss time with a hamstring injury and Moore revealed just how much time on Thursday.
Moore announced that the Saints have placed Etienne on injured reserve. That will make Monday night’s game against the Falcons the first of at least four games he will miss because of the move.
Etienne leads the Saints with 30 carries and 128 rushing yards. Alvin Kamara, Kendre Miller, and CJ Donaldson are the other running backs in New Orleans.
The Saints signed wide receiver Kevin Austin off of the practice squad to fill out their 53-man roster. Austin appeared in the first three games as a temporary elevation and has one catch for seven yards.
The Falcons returned to work Thursday ahead of their Monday night game against the Saints.
Defensive end Samson Ebukam returned to practice as a limited participant. It marks his first practice since injuring his hamstring in the Week 2 loss to the Panthers.
Linebacker Divine Deablo (hamstring) was also limited in Thursday’s practice.
Defensive end Za’Darius Smith took a rest day.
The Falcons have three consecutive primetime games, having beaten the Packers on Thursday Night Football. In Week 5, they play the Ravens on Sunday Night Football.
Sunday night’s instant classic between the Rams and Broncos had a back-to-the-future moment, when teams coached by Sean McVay and Sean Payton were involved in a potential pass interference situation with the game on the line.
The controversial non-call from the 2018 NFC Championship between the Rams and Saints happened just outside the L.A. five yard line. The controversial call from Sunday night happened in virtually the same spot on the field.
There are different opinions about the play. Some saw interference. Some did not.
Personally, I saw interference. Rams defensive back Josh Wallace used his right hand to shove Broncos receiver Pat Bryant just before the ball arrived.
And the operative rule, which lists seven different prohibited acts by the defender when the ball is in the air, starts with this one: “Contact by a player who is not playing the ball that restricts the opponent’s opportunity to make the catch.”
If the ball is arriving and the defender shoves him away from it, common sense says that was and is contact that restricts the opponent’s opportunity to make the catch.
The only question is whether Wallace was “playing the ball.” While on one hand he was hoping to make the interception (and did), the shove with the left hand wasn’t part of the effort to make the catch. It was part of the effort to ensure that the intended receiver couldn’t.
Chances are that it was a technique Wallace has learned, at some point in his time as a defensive back. A subtle, well-timed shove may not be seen by an official who is trying to sort through everything else that’s happening.
Bryant, for his part, flopped after he was shoved. The SGA-level reaction, while cartoonish, doesn’t change the fact that Bryant was shoved.
After the ridiculous non-call from 2018, which prompted a New Orleans boycott of Super Bowl LIII, the NFL decided to make pass interference calls and non-calls subject to replay review. The good idea was very poorly executed, and it lasted only one year.
Interference, or lack thereof, is a judgment call. Some could look at that play and see interference; others could look at the same play and reach the opposite conclusion.
That’s one of the biggest problems with the former officials who take jobs in broadcasting and periodically pontificate with the benefit of a frame-by-frame, 4K monitor. The question isn’t whether the former official (some of whom are former officials for a reason) subjectively believes pass interference happened. The question is whether the current official who was required to make the call in real-time with the naked eye abused his or her broad discretion.
One of the biggest problems with the TV referees is that they focus only on giving us their own interpretation of what they saw. In many cases, who cares? We all see the same thing. In those moments, those who do the job best remind us of the standard that applies to the decision that was made.
For the Broncos-Rams play, the best explanation would have been this one: “If probably wouldn’t have thrown a flag if I was in that position, but there’s enough there to justify someone else making a different decision.”
