The GOAT
Founder GSEZ
Sort of feels like Old Home Week, no? The Good Old Days?
I just can’t figure out which ones.
Meanwhile, I can see Archie (Bunker, not Manning) and Edith at the piano with the opening credits rolling over as we speak.
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I am always reminded that couples who have been together a long time will often finish each other’s sentences.
Other night, my wife said “fuck.”
Evening didn’t end well, although it did go on for a while.
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Now, let’s consider the 1980 Saints, the worst Saints team ever, by a Secretariat-in-the-Belmont type margin. The. Worst. Saints. Team. Ever.
(Thinking about that, I am reminded of the late, great conservative pundit P.J. O’Rourke’s comment about a state visit to Ireland by then-Russian prime minister and vodka aficionado Boris Yeltsin: “When the Aeroflot plane landed in Dublin, with the Irish Prime Minister waiting at the bottom of the gangway, it was announced that PM Yeltsin was “ill” and would be unable to make the meeting. Imagine being too drunk to meet the Prime Minister of Ireland.”)
This was Saints team that had tragically just missed the playoffs the previous year, and seemed poised for great things, and started out a surprising 0-3, lost game 4 on a horrible OPI call on the last play of the game, and finished 1-15.
But I’m not there yet.
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I do know of a couple of Saints teams that got off to slow starts despite legit expectations, one of which started 0-4, fought back to 4-4, fell to 5-7, and got back to 7-7 before losing the last two and finishing 7-9, wasting a half-decent season of a 28-year-old gunslinger named Drew Brees (28 TDs, 18 INTs, 89.4 passer rating). That was the 2007 New Orleans Saints.
I also know of a Saints team that was possibly the most average team in history, that somehow managed intra-season records of 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7 and 8-8. That was the 2008 New Orleans Saints.
These were the two seasons after we were in the 2006 NFC championship game.
But I’m not there yet.
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In 2017, the Saints also dropped the first two games, and that team finished 11-5 and would have been in the NFCCG if we didn’t have Marcus Williams.
To be fair, I’m not there yet either.
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The point is, if I haven’t beaten it into your head yet, is that we had starts like this with Payton and Brees, even after they had at least a season together. And we were pretty damn competitive for 15 years and I’ll go to my grave knowing we were robbed of a Super Bowl win in 2019.
Yet, this is a good football team. There’s a lot of talent here, and a good locker room.
Despite being last in the NFL in turnover differential and second-to-last in penalties committed, with special teams units that look like three monkeys screwing a greased football with a Benny Hill chase scene soundtrack, and with a QB shuffle and way too many injuries to really good players for this stage of the season, and still settling in with a new head coach….we’re 1-3 and could just as easily be 4-0 as 0-4.
To say nothing of critical phantom calls late in two of the three losses .
Now, I know that Sean Payton and Drew Brees are not walking through that door. And it’s a real stretch (yeah, delusion, I said it) to hope that Dennis Allen and Jameis Winston will have those kinds of careers.
But I still say this is a good team.
To be real, we are what our record says we are. 1-3. None of which has any bearing on game five, or the 12 games following.
We are also one game out of first in the NFC South.
Point being, we’re not anywhere yet. Settle the fuck down and get ready to party before kickoff on Sunday.
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We’ll have more fun and punch lines and closer analysis later in the week.
Meanwhile, as Sheriff Bart said at the end of Blazing Saddles, keep the faith, brothers.
GO SAINTS GO!