Etienne's Hamstring Puts Kendre Miller and CJ Donaldson on Deck for Week 4

Travis Etienne Jr. left Sunday's game against Las Vegas with a hamstring injury, and the Saints are now sorting out their backfield for the second straight week. Kendre Miller and CJ Donaldson are the names on the depth chart behind him — neither has logged significant production this season, and neither was signed to carry an offense.

This matters more than it would on a healthy roster. The Saints brought Etienne in specifically as a complement to Alvin Kamara, who has been managing an MCL sprain since August and has played through it in limited fashion. With Etienne now banged up, the team is effectively asking a patchwork backfield to operate behind an offensive line that has already lost its starting left tackle. That is a lot of compounding.

Kendre Miller has shown he can handle a workload when healthy — he got seven games of carries last season — but the situation around him is thin. The Saints traded away linebacker depth in August to acquire Zamir White as a depth piece; it is worth watching whether White factors into the Week 4 plan at all, though nothing in the current injury report confirms his availability or status. What is confirmed is that Miller is active and Donaldson is next on the chart.

The Saints have now dealt with a major injury to a key offensive piece in each of the first three weeks. At some point the roster construction has to hold, and right now there is not much evidence it will.