SAINT-DENIS, France — Almost six minutes remained in a game they trailed by six points when the New Orleans Saints punted the ball away to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Plain and simple, the Saints needed a stop. The quicker the better, but a stop nonetheless. The one thing they could not afford to do was the thing they did.

Pittsburgh took the ball and bled out the final 5:52 in excruciating fashion, grinding out an 11-play, 49-yard drive that included four first downs. Eight of those 11 plays were designed runs, and one was a designed pass that ended up as the most devastating run of the evening outside of the other two plays: two kneel-downs that sealed yet another loss.

It was a drive emblematic of what happened for much of Sunday’s game. When Pittsburgh decided to run the ball, the Saints too often offered little in the way of resistance.

Even when it looked like the Saints had gotten their stop — likely too little, too late anyway — they didn’t really get it. Saints linebacker Isaiah Stalbird was penalized for being offside as he attempted to block Chris Boswell’s 37-yard field goal with 1:04 to go, and the Steelers happily took the points off the board to accept a first down via penalty that allowed them to kneel out the remaining clock.

But the real killer came from the Steelers’ 42-year-old quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, who climbed in the pocket on third-and-6 from the Saints’ 34 and saw nobody home in the Saints defensive zone. The oldest non-specialist in the NFL took off for an 8-yard gain that gave Pittsburgh a new set of downs and took the clock to the two-minute warning.

“We’ve just got to find a way to get off the field,” defensive tackle Davon Godchaux said. “They had success in the four-minute, a couple runs, but then we were able to get them into third down and the heartbreak comes when Aaron Rodgers is running the ball.”

Even Rodgers couldn’t really believe what happened.

“I'm just not very fast anymore,” Rodgers said. “But I feel like I'm moving pretty good and made some plays outside the pocket today.

“... I just felt like I could move and extend it, and I wasn't thinking I was going to run until I kind of cleared the first level and peeked and realized, ‘Oh, I only have to get 5 yards here? I can do that.’”

Rodgers gained more on that single scramble than any Saints ball carrier managed all day against Pittsburgh. It was truly the difference in the game. Pittsburgh ran the ball almost at will against New Orleans whenever it chose to do so, finishing with 148 yards on the ground.

Jaylen Warren, a rising star in the Steelers backfield, averaged 5.6 yards per carry. His backup, Rico Dowdle, went for 4.6 yards a pop.

“We knew coming in we could run it against (the Saints),” Rodgers said, “and I thought those guys played really well.”

New Orleans has faced some of the NFL’s premier running backs through seven games. But its performance against those players has continued to leave so much to be desired. Sunday was the fourth time in seven games that the Saints have allowed an opponent to average 4.9 yards per carry or better.

When Pittsburgh lined up for that final drive, it was no secret what it wanted to do. The Steelers brought in an extra offensive lineman for each of that drive’s first five plays. Those plays, all runs, went for gains of 16, 6, 5, 1 and 3 yards. When New Orleans finally got them in on third down, Rodgers took off for the backbreaker.

“That was a frustrating drive, especially because you felt like you had an opportunity that you could have gotten the stop,” linebacker Kaden Elliss said.

In general, allowing 16 points to the opposing team is usually a good enough effort to win a game, and scoring 10 points is almost never going to be enough to win in the modern NFL.

But not all 16-10 games are equal. Elliss understands how the math works.

“I know offensively it was only 10 points, but when you're not getting them back on the field quickly, you kind of got to look at yourself in the mirror,” Elliss said. ”Yeah, we held them to 16 points, but you need some more three-and-outs, some takeaways, some opportunities where you really give the ball back to the offense with momentum.”

The Saints scored 10 points, which was not good enough to win. But they only possessed the ball six times. All but one of those drives made their way into Pittsburgh territory. Reasonably, four of them should have resulted in points — the Saints missed a field goal and turned it over inside the Steelers 10.

Those mistakes matter a lot more when the defense can’t get the offense back on the field, even when everybody knows what’s coming.