METAIRIE, La. -- The bitterness of the New Orleans Saints' 45-24 loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night will linger throughout a shortened week.
That's exactly how Saints defensive end Chase Young wants it with the 4-0 Minnesota Vikings up next on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, Fox).
"You should be upset," Young said Wednesday. "We didn't play to our standard, but the positive is seeing everybody come in today, how they're dealing with it. And that's what you want to see: dudes who have a sour taste in their mouth, dudes who are mad about it. I hope you mad. You get punched in your mouth, hopefully you ain't smiling."
Young said he was pleased with the response of his teammates this week as they figure out how to regroup on both sides of the ball before Sunday. While Young will be facing an offense that ranks 18th in scoring, the Saints' offense will go up against the NFL's best scoring defense and top pass rush.
"They're undefeated, so that kind of speaks to the defense that they've had," tight end Juwan Johnson said. "[They] bring a large amount of exotic blitzes, exotic looks. You're going to get a lot of shell looks, you're going to get a bunch of different shell looks. The biggest part is just exploiting just the gaps in their defense ... just playing our ball. We know how to play.
"We just need to execute better."
The Saints (1-3) will be underdogs against a Vikings squad that Saints wideout Chris Olave said is "one of the best teams in the NFL." Olave noted in an interview with French media this week that the Vikings have a lot of stunts and blitzes that can be difficult to face.
"We're just going to have to put our best foot forward," he said.
"They're 4-0, we're 1-3. On paper it's a lopsided matchup, but at the end of the day we still have to go out there and play for 60 minutes."
Early mistakes doomed the Saints against the Falcons. The Saints allowed 205 yards on the ground after letting Bijan Robinson run 59 yards for a touchdown three plays into the game. The Saints rushed for only 50 yards as a team.
That rushing output and the team's slow starts have gone hand in hand. The Saints have the third-fewest first-quarter points this season (six), compared with 39 in the fourth quarter, which is tied for the most in the league with the Buffalo Bills and Denver Broncos.
The Saints have rushed for more than 100 yards only once this season.
"To be transparent, it's obvious that we've struggled running," Johnson said. "And I think we've been pretty good in the offseason just being dialed in on our keys and running the ball and it hasn't shown, but I think whenever we, and when we do well at running the ball, we're going to see an explosive amount of big plays just from our offense."
Part of the lack of run game comes from falling behind early, which has forced the Saints to pass more. Defensively, they've given up 32 points per game, last in the league, a difficult combination for offensive balance.
Saints quarterback Tyler Shough has already attempted 180 passes this season, which is the second most in franchise history through four games behind Drew Brees' 191 attempts through four games in 2012. Brees had to throw often in those games (the Saints started 0-4) to try to keep pace due to a defense that still holds the record for most yards allowed in a season.
The current Saints know they have to eliminate mistakes they can no longer afford with such a small margin for error.
"In the NFL, you can't live in that world where they know you're going to throw it every single time," Shough said. "And I don't have a problem doing that, but it's just tougher.
"You can't have turnovers early in the game, and then we've got to be able to go down there and score. Three-and-outs, stuff like that. It's going to happen sometimes but ... limit those mistakes."
So how do they fix the slow starts issue that dates to last season? Johnson said he doesn't think the Saints need to "turn practice over" or make huge adjustments.
"That's what people do when you have no answers, but we do have answers to the things that we do need to do. Again, we're only four games in. This is essentially this season's first quarter," Johnson said. "We know what we need to work on, and we're going to do exactly that."
The Saints will make adjustments, though. Shough said the team put an emphasis on starting faster this week and made small changes, such as tweaking the practice schedule to try to build momentum quicker.
"More than anything, as players, we just have to do a better job of executing faster earlier. I think what we've done in the past and what we did last year, I think what we're going to start doing, is just have a compete period at the beginning of practice instead of the end," Shough said. "And that way you're immediately going right into it, and that's something that you can work on."
Shough said there's no magic fix, pointing out that the team started better against the Las Vegas Raiders (the Saints scored a touchdown in the first quarter but missed the point-after attempt), then fell apart in the fourth quarter with turnovers.
"It's kind of a double-edged sword there," Shough said. "And more than anything, it kind of comes down to relentless execution."