Derek Carr had only 59 pass yards entering the fourth quarter. He led field-goal and TD drives in the final 10 minutes but threw a game-ending pick to the Eagles’ Blankenship after Saquon Barkley‘s TD had put them ahead for good.

Carr was 2-of-5 passing for 56 yards and the interception on deep shots (20-plus yards downfield), according to Next Gen Stats.

“They didn’t go over our head all day. … It’s cool,” Gardner-Johnson said. “We’ve got the best secondary, best D-line, best front seven in the league right now, and I’m popping it. I’m popping it because at the end of the day, they’re saying we was down and out, going by last week. Now, look atcha now.”

Gardner-Johnson also wasn’t afraid to call out his former team for the way they played, accusing the Saints of “playing dirty” and calling them “front-runners.” He singled out Saints defensive tackle Khristian Boyd‘s blind-side tackle on Eagles wide receiver DeVonta Smith, calling it “a cheap shot” and “the dirtiest s— I ever saw in football.”

Smith left the game after the fourth-quarter hit and was evaluated for a concussion.

But Gardner-Johnson wasn’t finished. He spent most of the time talking postgame about his defense’s performance and also about how the Saints weren’t as good in his mind as everyone else seemed to make them out to be.

“Everybody was saying we’re coming in against the No. 1 team and all this, man,” Gardner-Johnson said. “Listen, at the end of the day, it’s football. It’s only Week 2. How are you the best offense or best team if there’s only been two weeks played? S—, we got what, 17, 16 weeks to go?

“So at the end of the day, we had to just tune out the noise, understand who we were and go out there and play Eagle ball, and that’s what happened.”