That sick feeling the New Orleans Saints and their fans left Caesars Superdome with Sunday is far worse than the bug that kept defensive linemen Nathan Shepherd and Vernon Broughton from dressing out.

At least Shepherd and Broughton, both inactive because of an illness, likely will bounce back and be good to go next week.

As for whatever is ailing the Saints, who knows if or when they will bounce back.

There just doesn’t seem to be a cure for it all.

And if there is one, second-year coach Kellen Moore surely hasn’t discovered it yet.

The longer it takes for him to figure it out, the more these losses will pile up. And the more the losses pile up, the more Mickey Loomis and company will have to ask themselves if Moore is the guy to get this team pointed in the right direction.

All that good equity Moore built up at the end of last season is slipping away.  

For the third time in 14 days, an opposing team came into the Caesars Superdome and handled their business against the Saints.

The latest one came Sunday, a 23-13 clunker to the Minnesota Vikings.

By the time this one was over, a noisy multitude of fans clad in purple had taken over the building, their Skol claps just as loud as those “ATL” chants from Atlanta Falcons’ fans six days earlier. Or those “Raiders” chants two weeks ago.

All that optimism the Saints gave their fans after going on the road and stunning the Baltimore Ravens in Week 2 is gone. If Moore doesn’t figure things out quickly, this entire season may be gone, too.

“Losing the way we have lost these last three games is gut-wrenching,” said Saints guard David Edwards. “It sucks. The competitor in you wants to smash your face against the wall. (We have to figure out) how do we move forward in a way that’s constructive and positive and moving people together along.”

That is the question Moore has to solve. Whatever he’s been doing the past few weeks hasn’t worked. As a result, the Saints have all the symptoms of a bad team: costly penalties, slow starts, lack of a running game, inability to stop the run, inability to sustain drives are all reasons the Saints have dropped to 1-4.   

Moore’s postgame news conferences after the losses are all starting to sound the same. Unfortunately for Moore, the results have been the same, too.

“You have to stick together through these type of storms,” Moore said. “You have to get better. That’s the thing we have to focus on. We have to get better during the week and give ourselves an opportunity to play better football next Sunday.”

Moore was able to weather the storm last season when the Saints started 2-10 before winning four of their last five. Now he all of a sudden finds himself having to keep things afloat again. There is no indication that he’s losing the locker room yet. But if things continue down this path, he will.

The Saints hit the road next week to play Jameis Winston and the New York Giants. Then they travel across the pond to Paris to play the Pittsburgh Steelers before their bye week. Maybe getting away from New Orleans will do this team some good considering how bad they’ve been in what used to be one of the most intimidating venues in the NFL. That’s no longer the case. The loudest cheers of the game came at halftime for Drew Brees, who was inducted into the Saints Ring of Honor. Seeing Brees’ name in the rafters was the only reason for Saints fans to look up Sunday.

The Saints are now 3-8 in the Dome under Moore. The three losses on this home stretch are even more surprising when you look at how well the Saints played on the road against the Detroit Lions and Baltimore Ravens to start the season. Then they came home and blew a lead against the Raiders and got embarrassed by the Falcons on a Monday night when they were celebrating Domecoming and Steve Gleason’s blocked punt. The trifecta was completed Sunday, which was supposed to be a game where the Saints got up off the mat from that beatdown from the Falcons six days ago.

Instead, they continue to fall apart at home.

“Three games in a row?” center Erik McCoy asked rhetorically. “S**t’s unacceptable.”

Let’s be fair. The Vikings are a good team, evident by their 5-0 record. They are good because of their pressuring defense and special teams. Their offense came into the game as one of the worst in the league. But you wouldn’t have known it by watching this game. Minnesota came into the game last in the league in passing yards per game (156 per game). They had more than half of that by the end of the first quarter and finished with 229. The Saints’ offense, meanwhile, managed just 142 yards and committed three turnovers. That will lose you a lot of football games, which is exactly what the Saints have managed to do these last three weeks.

“They played better than us and coached better than us,” Moore said.

That’s been a familiar theme and the main reason Saints fans haven’t seen a win at home since December.

“We’ve got to find a way to win,” said Saints defensive end Cam Jordan. “I’m not even worried about just winning at home. I want to win on the road, at home, in the sky, in the alley, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to learn how to win together and be a more disciplined team.”

The losing has become sickening.

It’s up to Moore to find the cure.