Now, after a bye week to rest and recuperate, the Saints have exactly eight games to prove they meant business when they finished the first half of the season with a 4-4 record -- thanks to that much-needed win over a troubled and fading Chargers' team.

While some NFL teams would be absolutely giddy with a 4-4 record, the Saints are hardly pleased at this point. Going into Sunday's key game with the Atlanta Falcons (5-3) in the Georgia Dome, they are in last place in the NFC South and are in need of another win to tighten up the division race a little.

The Saints head into a critical stretch of their schedule in which they play three of the next four games on the road -- including divisional matchups at Atlanta and Tampa Bay (Nov. 30) -- so not letting the rest of the division get any farther ahead this month will determine if they have a shot at postseason play when December comes.

The key to staying alive will be to play more consistently, Saints coach Sean Payton said. While part of the problems can be blamed on a spate of injuries and a schedule that had them playing no home games in a 43-day stretch, Payton won't use them as excuses for the inconsistency.

"We're not going to be able to keep winning one week and losing the next week," he said. "If we do that, we're on pace to be right at 8-8. Fortunately for us, we have a lot of football left. But we're going to have to play more consistently. I think anyone would see that.

"We're going to have to play better in all areas, not just on defense or the kicking game, but on offense, too. It would be easy to say that the defense has to play better, but in some of those losses I felt that they played real well, and we came up short on offense."

That's why Sunday's game against the Falcons is so important.

A win would pull New Orleans into a tie with Atlanta and one game behind 6-3 Tampa Bay, which has a bye this week, and would likely keep them two games behind Carolina. The Panthers, who play at Oakland on Sunday, would be 7-2 with a victory.

But at this point, the Saints can't worry about what other teams are doing -- especially with four division games to play. They have the ability to make some noise with two games against the Falcons and one each with the Panthers and Bucs.

No one has to tell Payton that it won't be easy if his team plays up and down like it did in the first seven games. He would, however, take the way they played against the Chargers when they went about their business with a sense of urgency.

"We've got to find a way, and I've got to find a way, to do a better job of getting that team that focused -- and that prepared mentally and physically --each week in the next eight weeks," he said.

SERIES HISTORY: 78th regular-season meeting. Falcons lead, 43-34, but the Saints have won four in a row and seven of the last 10. The Saints swept the season series in 2007, winning 22-16 in the Superdome and blowing out the Falcons, 34-14, in the Georgia Dome. The Falcons claimed a win in the only postseason matchup of the old division rivals in 1991, 27-20.