METAIRIE, La. -- Kenny Vaccaro laughed when he was asked if he has been playing his best football over the past three games.

Then he pulled out a gas mask.

Vaccaro and the other New Orleans Saints defensive backs were prepared for such questions Wednesday after the Saints’ defense has suddenly morphed into a dominant unit during their three-game win streak.

Vaccaro said the gas masks came from veteran Saints cornerback Sterling Moore, who bought them at a costume shop. The message was clear.

“In case y’all gas me up, I brought the gas mask,” Vaccaro told the media. “We just knew what the clippings were gonna say. We knew what questions y’all were gonna ask. ... We’re not believing no clippings, nothing. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Vaccaro appreciates that sentiment more than any Saints defensive back; he has been here the longest after being drafted in the first round in 2013.

And he knows the press clippings and questions haven’t always been so kind. The Saints had the NFL's 32nd-ranked pass defense in yards allowed last season and ranked 31st in 2015.

“Everyone’s gonna say, ‘Oh, look what we’ve done the last three weeks.’ But I’ve been through 50 games of not good talk,” Vaccaro said. “And until we start stacking a year or a year or two, that’s when the culture’s actually changed and not just a couple games.

“We’re a young defense, so every game we win, every time we play good on defense, I think that helps us get better. But still, it’s only three weeks. Good teams, good defenses do it for years before people think, ‘Oh, they’re a defensive team.’

“Nobody believes that right now. They just think we’re hot.”

Vaccaro could have been talking about himself as much as the defense overall.

He has shown flashes of greatness, starting with his rookie season, when he finished third in the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year voting. But he has also battled inconsistency, including at the beginning of this season, when he struggled in the Week 1 loss at Minnesota then got temporarily demoted during the Week 2 loss against New England.

Saints coach Sean Payton has insisted multiple times that it wasn’t a benching and that Vaccaro wasn’t singled out for the defense’s early struggles. But at the time, Payton said Vaccaro needed to show more consistency. And he has been pleased with the results since then.

“There are a lot of things he’s doing well right now. I’d say he’s played some of his best football,” Payton said of Vaccaro, who scored his first career touchdown on a fumble recovery in the end zone to help kick-start Sunday’s 52-38 victory over the Detroit Lions and has two interceptions over the past three games.

“I think he’s someone the closer you get him to the play [at the line of scrimmage] ... he’s played really well,” Payton said. “We’re just seeing him make progress. These last few games, he’s been outstanding.”

Vaccaro said he understood being pulled from the game in Week 2 because, “when you’ve been losing and you haven’t been playing great defense around here, our leash is 2 inches long.”

But Vaccaro said he knew that neither he nor the defense were far off, and that the success has come because players are feeding off of one another.

“I’ve always thought I had the ability. It’s really timing. Everything’s working together,” Vaccaro said. “The pass rush is better. When you’ve got good rookies like [cornerback] Marshon [Lattimore] locking up, you get more opportunities to make plays ...

“When everyone plays like that, everyone eats.”