Green Bay Packers at New Orleans Saints: 9/12/21 NFL Picks and Prediction

The New Orleans Saints had another successful year last season, finishing the season with a 12-4 record, however, like Green Bay, lost to the eventual Super Bowl Champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in the Divisional Round of the Playoffs. New Orleans went through a bunch of changes this offseason, no bigger than having Drew Brees retire, and there will be a lot of new faces on the Saints after having to shed over 100 million dollars in cap space. Offensively, after a preseason battle for the starting QB position between Jameis Winston & Taysom Hill, it was announced last week by Sean Payton that Jameis Winston will start the season as the top QB for the Saints. Wilson will not have his top WR threat in Michael Thomas who will start the season on the PUP list and will have to largely depend upon Tre’Quan Smith (34 rec, 448 yards, 4 TD), Marquez Callaway (21 rec, 213 yards), & Adam Trautman (15 rec, 171 yards, TD). Leading the way for the New Orleans backfield will be one of the best dual threat running backs in the NFL in Alvin Kamara who finished last season rushing for 932 yards & 16 TD’s while also hauling in 756 yards & 5 TD’s on 83 receptions.

Defensviely, New Orleans finished last season as one of the better defenses in the NFL, ranking t-5th in scoring defense at 21.1 ppg, however, it will be interesting to see if the Saints can repeat that success after losing many key pieces of that defense, including Trey Hendrickson, Kwon Alexander, & Malcolm Jenkins. Leading the way for the defense this season will be Cameron Jordan.

The Packers are 7-1 ATS in their last 8 games in September and 5-1 ATS in their last 6 games in Week 1. The Saints are 7-2 ATS in their last 9 games vs. NFL opponents and 8-3 ATS in their last 11 games overall.

This should be one of the more entertaining games to watch this Sunday, however, it’s hard not to like the Packers to cover in this one. Green Bay basically returns the same team that went 13-3 last season and will the trio of Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Jones, & Devante Adams, should be able to repeat that offensive success that saw the Packers average over 30.0 ppg last season. New Orleans has some talent, however between the fact that Jameis Winston is a far from proven QB who doesn’t have his biggest receiving weapon in Michael Thomas and that I think the New Orleans defense is going to take a step back this season, I think the play here is to take Green Bay to cover this small spread. Good Luck!