So we just won the Super Bowl. The city is pretty much at a standstill as people celebrate. The Saints are on top of the NFL…and we’re still not the favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl. So I say, “Screw you, Vegas oddsmakers.” (The Colts are 6-1, the Saints and Chargers are 8-1). And I say screw you to all those commentators who talked about how Peyton Manning lost the game with his interception, which Tracy Porter returned for a game-sealing touchdown. The pundits treated a 13-3 team like miserable underdogs. Then we won. And they still think we’re not as good—consider The Onion’s take on things: New Orleans moves to No. 3 in NFL power rankings. Too bad—we have this:
and nobody else does. You can respect us or not. It really doesn’t matter to me. Quarterbacks like Mark Sanchez, Brett Favre, and Peyton Manning got more commercial airtime than Drew Brees during the Super Bowl, but those three didn’t get to lift the MVP trophy and film the “I’m going to Disney World!” commercial. People are acting like Drew Brees is just now a member of the NFL’s elite QBs, when anyone with a brain would have seen the numbers Brees has been putting up ever since he arrived in New Orleans and realized just how phenomenal a player he is. Clearly he was already among the elite, and you moronic pundits are just late to the party. Continue reading ‘the fact that people still don’t respect the Saints’
I’ve been asking people who they thought was the MVP of last night’s Saints win. Walking out of the Dome, my parents were uncertain. My friends at school opted for Drew Brees—3 TDs, no picks, a QB rating over 100—and Tracy Porter—who forced a fumble and made the crucial interception late in the game to keep the Vikes from having a chance at a long field goal attempt to win the game. My facebook friends chimed in with a number of other suggestions: Vilma, for a forced fumble, fumble recovery, and interception; Hartley, for the game-clincher; Pierre Thomas, with 99 yards from scrimmage, two TDs, and a crucial 40-yard kickoff return in overtime when he filled in for the injured Courtney Roby; and the entire d-line for the pressuring Favre. If I had to pick one of those guys, I’d probably go with Pierre Thomas or Jonathan Vilma. Brees wasn’t as accurate as he usually is—and I give the Vikings defensive line a great deal of credit for that. They didn’t sack him, but they kept him uncomfortable. Porter was picked on and gave up a pass interference penalty in the end zone. But there’s one guy who stood out above all the rest on a day when the Vikings outgained the Saints by a huge margin. One person tipped him as an “unsung hero,” then misspelled his name. That man? Thomas Morstead. He is, without a doubt, the MVP of the Saints’ victory. And though he may be considered an “unsung hero,” in this post I will sing of legs and the man. Continue reading ‘not giving Morstead enough credit’
If you’re second-guessing anything from the Saints’ 26-23 win over the Falcons, it’s probably that fake field goal late in the 4th quarter. I’ll get back to that later, but the real mistakes were a few clock management errors that made the result far closer than it should have been. First, the Saints didn’t run enough time off the clock at the end of the 1st half, enabling the Falcons to mount a scoring drive of their own; second, the pass-happy playcalling on the drive leading up to that fake field goal let the Falcons save their timeouts and gave them more time to drive down the field for a tie or win. Continue reading ‘bad clock management #4′
You’ve seen it happen tons of times. A team gets the ball with a few seconds left in the 1st half and rather than take a shot with a Hail Mary pass, the quarterback takes a knee and the team trots off to the locker room. But with a few seconds left, why not take a shot? This is yet another example of bad football coaching: teams play it safe instead of making the play that would maximize their chance of scoring points (and thus their chance of winning). One example occurred in last night’s Saints-Patriots game. Continue reading ‘first half kneeldowns’
I watched the Saints’ win over the Falcons. After the Falcons turned the ball over on downs with 1:49 left, I thought, “I realize they can’t quite run the clock out, but with an 11-point lead the Saints should kneel on the ball and then punt on 4th down. I realize this is one of those things where people are going to say, “Kevin, you’re only saying this because of what happened.” Well, that’s true; had the Saints run for a first down, had there not been an injury, had there not been a fumble, no, I probably wouldn’t be writing this right now. (I’d still be right, though.) But I definitely thought the Saints should have taken a knee. And my dad said the same thing when I talked to him after the game, and I checked a few message boards and saw at least one more person agreed with us. Click here for my explanation.
