Here’s the good news, Saints fans, there is still hope. Lots of hope in fact.

Remember one thing when you look at your team’s disappointing 2-4 record, the rest of the division stinks just as bad if not worse.

Many others know your pain.

Not one team in the NFC South is above .500. Not one team has outscored its opponents this year. Not one team probably deserves to be in the playoffs right now.

Then again the playoffs don’t start right now. More hope.

Yet somebody will have to do so. Some team will limp into the postseason from this group and thanks to winning the division will even get a home game.

Why not the Saints?

Don’t think that Super Bowl talk should be re-started around New Orleans just yet, but you never know what can happen once you get into the second season.

Head coach Sean Payton was even upbeat Monday despite Sunday’s last-second loss in Detroit that dropped the Saints to 0-4 on the road.

“If we continue to make the same improvements and progress that I saw this week then we will be alright,” Payton said.

He can afford to be optimistic because he can read the standings and he knows his foes.

The four division teams have combined to post an 8-17-1 record this year. Two of the four were blown out Sunday with Tampa Bay being on a bye or you would expect that number to have been three.

The Saints were the only team that was close to winning. Of course they have been close before.

The loss to the Lions was the third time this season that the Saints have dropped a lead in the final minute. All of those are on the road and all of those losses came when the defense, which we were promised was championship ready, could not finish.

“It’s frustrating and tough,” Payton said about losing late. “We have to be able to close things out.”

Late trouble in games is leading to big troubles on the year. Still, there is hope.

Remember, the Saints may be 0-4 on the road but they are still 2-0 at home. Even better, six of the final 10 games are inside the Superdome.

And the Saints are not the only team terrible on the road. The entire division has won just two of 15 games away from home.

That gives Payton hope.

“There is a ton of football left,” he said. “We have finished basically a third of the season.”

As to standings watching, the coach says not yet.

“The focus for us is more internal,” Payton said. “It is on ourselves.”

One real area of concern is mistakes, especially by quarterback Drew Brees, who was just 2 of 13 in the fourth quarter in Detroit including an interception.

“I feel I let the team down,” Brees said after the loss.

He has had more late trouble than ever before, but Payton isn’t concerned about his aging All-Pro QB.

“He is the least of our worries,” he said.

Maybe so, but injuries and offseason moves have put more pressure on Brees to make plays at the end of games.

But Brees is not the only problem that needs fixing. The defense has made huge mistakes at the end of games starting with the opener in Atlanta then Cleveland.

In both games the opponents drove the field for a game-winning score. In Detroit it was two late touchdowns that led to the defeat.

It leaves defensive coordinator Rob Ryan looking like the absent-minded professor on the sidelines as he searches for answers.

Despite all this confusion and defeats the division is still there for the taking.

Or maybe the title is just going to fall into the lap of the Saints.(Associated Press)

Paul Sancya