Gumbo
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- Mar 19, 2019
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It looked like Alvin Kamara would be stopped short of a six-touchdown game by Saints head coach Sean Payton, but it turned out that no one could stop Kamara on Christmas.
Kamara tied an NFL record with six touchdowns in the Saints’ 52-33 win over the Vikings. It looked like Kamara would miss his chance at scoring a sixth time when Payton opted to give the ball to Taysom Hill from the 1-yard-line late in the fourth quarter, but he got one last chance.
Drew Brees hit tight end Adam Trautman for a 41-yard gain to the Vikings’ 3-yard-line and Kamara got the call on the next play. He scored and tied Ernie Nevers, Dub Jones, and Gale Sayers as the only players with six touchdowns in a game in NFL history. Nevers is the only other player to run for six scores in a game and Sayers did in the last time in 1965.
Kamara ran 22 times for 155 yards. That marks a career high and he did it all while wearing one red shoe and one green shoe to celebrate a Christmas that Kamara won’t soon forget.
The win makes the Saints the champions of the NFC South. It’s the fourth straight year they’ve won the division.
Those exploits represented the tip of the spear on offense for New Orleans. They ran for 264 yards and threw for 319 yards while scoring on seven of their first nine possessions. The only exceptions were a pair of interceptions by Drew Brees. Brees generally looked better than he did in his return to action last week, but there were some shaky moments in addition to the interceptions. Tight end Jared Cook bailed him out of one of them and turned it into a 44-yard gain, which tells you what kind of day it was for the Saints on offense.
Defense wasn’t quite as good as the Vikings were able to rack up 364 yards and take advantage of Saints penalties that allowed Minnesota to keep things closer than they actually felt for much of the afternoon. The Vikings were eliminated from playoff contention with the loss and will close out the season against the Lions.
The Saints are now 11-4 and they remain alive in the hunt for the first seed in the NFC. They’ll need the Packers to lose twice while they beat the Panthers in Week 17.