Young will clearly be the focus after the way things fell apart — the first play of the Dave Canales era was an interception, which he described as an “overthrow” to new wide receiver Diontae Johnson. But the breakdowns were systemic.

“I mean, we just didn’t give him a lot of opportunities, right,” Thielen said. “A lot of times it was a guy running around to sack, or maybe it wasn’t getting open or whatever. Again, football is the best team sport for a reason. Now, quarterbacks still get paid a lot of money and they get scrutinized a lot. But shooting, defense, special teams, offense, we didn’t play well enough to give us opportunities to be successful.

“So that’s what happens when you don’t.”

The guys running free was a protection issue that several players said could be lifted from the film, the kind of communication issues that accompany so much news. And not being able to run the ball to get the Saints off the line wasn’t pragmatic when they were scoring right away and in their first nine possessions. It may have only been the first game of a 17-game season, but that was small consolation at the time.

“When you start out in a 10-0 hole, you’re in a bad position, right?” center Austin Corbett said. “You just have to keep fighting, keep your head down and keep working from there, and you know, you’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do. That’s just part of it. You’re going to get hit in the face in life. I mean, you’ve got to embrace that and accept that adversity and move on.

“That’s it, the double-edged sword of it. You think, oh yeah, it’s week 1, but as a competitor it doesn’t feel good at all. We got beat up in all three phases tonight.”