In a way, we owe them a thank you. Thank you New Orleans Saints. Thank you for not getting over .500 for the first time this season. Thank you for not letting us develop unreasonable hopes of a potential playoff berth. Thank you for freeing my Sunday's of anxiety for the next two months. Another win or two and you really would have built up a confidence throughout the fanbase. It couldn't have been easy to piss away a game against one of the worst teams in the NFL. And for no other reason than to rip off the bandaid and show that the wounds that ailed this team through the first 5 weeks haven't even come close to healing? If nothing else this team surely has a dedication to expectation management. Consistently inconsistent. It might result in a few more wins than being just plain bad, but it's probably not as good for the mental health of anyone financially or emotionally invested in this team.
Am I pissed off by today's result? Yeah, of course. Three straight wins will give any fan a false sense of security. With that said, I wasn't shocked. I may not have seen it coming before the game started, but I had watched this movie before. Just had to get past the opening credits before I realized it. I needed to see a little plot development before I was 100% sure. I mean, the unforgivable turnovers? The obscene amount of penalties? The surefire interception that was gift wrapped to Delanie Walker for a 60+ yard touchdown? All of that was just too ridiculously familiar not to be taken from the same script. I just wish the Saints would get more creative with their screenwriting, because they have been churning out heartbreaking melodramas for the better part of two years. Jesus Christ guys. I know that cliche feel good stories aren't cliche, predictable, feel good stories aren't as exciting, but there is a reason that genre exists. It's because people don't like to be fucking disappointed all the time. 
You can say this team lacks talent. It does. You can say that they were batting a handful of important injuries today. They were. However, the fact of the matter is that there is no excuse for losing to the Tennessee Titans. There is no excuse to come out like gangbusters and score three touchdowns on their first three possessions, and then manage just one for the rest of the game. There no reason for a team that held Marcus Mariota without a first down on the first two possessions to turn around and make him look like a Hall Of Famer before the clock struck zero. This loss wasn't about the skill level on either side of the ball. It was about which team wanted it more, and there is no sufficient evidence from the second half game tape that proves that team was the New Orleans Saints. They couldn't block, they couldn't tackle, they couldn't cover. Not because they were physically unable to, but because whatever motivation they had to do so in the first quarter up and left by the second quarter and was home napping on the couch during the second half.
It has gotten to the point where the Saints losing to a bad team at home is one of the most predictable, yet inexplicable, phenomenons in the all of the NFL. It's completely useless to try to put your finger on the pulse of this team because you never know what you are going to get from week to week, or even quarter to quarter. It's like trying to understand a narcoleptic distance runner's FitBit. That's it. Narcolepsy. The only thing that can explain why the New Orleans Saints dozed through the end of a movie that they were starring in. Oh well, maybe they'll have a chance to watch it again next year, because crawling back to mediocrity only to slip off a cliff once they get there appears to be an annual occurrence for this franchise. Heroic performances from rookie quarterbacks and a whole bunch of Mularkey. They make more guest appearances in crucial moments in Saints games than Rob Schneider in Adam Sandler's career.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|
RSS Feed
