Tuesday, December 01, 2009
He'll pick out a receiver and make you a believer
1. According to
da Paper, crowd noise at the Football game got up to 120 decibels last night. Any louder than that and the "Who Dat?" chant may become less of a rhetorical boast than a sincere question.
"Did you and Daddy have a good time at the game?"
"Who Dat?"
...
[Commence pseudo-Abbot and Costello skit]
2. This was a nice moment: Brady and Belichick reflecting on lessons learned. (T-P Photo Credit: Chuck Cook)
3. T-P sportswriter Jeff Duncan
writes:
How dominant were the Saints in their 38-17 pounding of the New England Patriots on Monday night?
Very. The Pats endured punishment from all sides-- kind of like Tiger Woods' Cadillac Escalade.
So dominant Patriots quarterback Tom Brady admitted his team, the one that has won three Super Bowl titles in the past nine years, basically didn't belong on the same field with the Saints.
"There's a big gap between us," Brady said.
"Gap?" But Tom, I thought our bromance was larger than the game of football. Damn straight.
"They were better than we were in every phase of the game," Patriots Coach Bill Belichick said. "I don't know how to put it any other way."
Apparently Bill doesn't [have to] say that very often.
The Saints set a series of records in the process:
• Their 9.6 yards a play were the best in franchise history.
• Drew Brees' 16.1 yards per pass attempt was a single-game record.
Yawn. Enough numerology. That's for eggheads. What about the important stuff?
• And [the Saints] likely set an unofficial record for most playings of the anthem "Stand Up and Get Crunked" in Superdome history.
Now we're
talking.
Thanks to a creative game plan by coordinator Gregg Williams, the Saints were able to largely control the league's second-rated passing offense with their three top cornerbacks on the sideline. For much of the night, their secondary consisted of a rookie (Malcolm Jenkins) and two thirty-something veterans (Mike McKenzie and Chris McAlister) who were on the street two weeks ago.
Amazing.
4. T-P sportswriter John DeShazier elaborates:
Of all the improbable, unlikely and utterly unbelievable twists and turns that have accompanied the New Orleans Saints' magically perfect 2009 season, a singular spotlight now must be reserved for Mike McKenzie.
...
[I]n Week 12 of 2009, he turned in a virtuoso defensive performance in front of the 70,768 fans that comprised the second-largest crowd in Superdome history, but surely staked its claim as the loudest.
...
McKenzie, who hadn't played an NFL game since [busting his kneecap] Nov. 9, 2008, and who was signed all of one week before being tossed into the fire against [Randy]Moss and the Patriots, played lock-down corner like he had a point to prove.
...
Three solo tackles, three passes defensed and one monumental, momentum-changing interception was not the kind of work to be expected of a player who hadn't lined up over a receiver this season.
Keep building that interception up, because I have a killer overlooked point to make.
McKenzie wore the magic gloves on Monday night, and put them to use in the first quarter.
Of course, he had help from a teammate. Because if receiver Courtney Roby hadn't run down New England's Wes Welker from behind on Welker's 41-yard punt return, it would've been an 87-yard return for a touchdown, a 14-3 Patriots lead and another deep, early deficit for the Saints.
D'oh! He took my pet insight about Roby! Nice one, Shaze.
6. Coach Sean Payton described quarterback Drew Brees' performance as "magnificent". I wish Brees could wear a helmet steady-cam for one game so fans could get a true perspective of what he's doing back there, in split-seconds, with an obscured view of the field. We get so used to football from a bird's eye angle, and Brees makes it look so easy, that we can forget the level of difficulty involved in throwing accurate passes to moving targets while big men try to body slam you. Truly, I've not seen a better passer than Drew Brees, and I'd love to see the game from his viewpoint-- my own personal Breezus cam.
Labels: Saints
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7 Comments:
This game was all Belichick being a turd to the great detriment of his team. Angry at the press and fans for criticizing his paranoid 4th and 2 against Indianapolis, Belichick went for multiple 4th downs vs the Saints and basically ran the game from panic mode all night. Belichick was more interested in telling his critics to fuck off than he was in winning a football game. And then he pouted and quit with 5 minutes left to play.
Basically what happened Monday night was the coach forfeited a game in order to satisfy his crappy mood.
What. An. Asshole.
I can't believe he wasn't fired today.
Uh, Jeffrey, going for it on 4th and short is the statistically intelligent thing to do, especially when a) you have no confidence that your defense can stop the opposing offense, and b) you have great confidence in your QB. B is the more important.
Belichick routinely goes for it on 4th down. So, incidentally, does some other guy named Sean Payton.
Jeffrey, are you familiar at all with the stylings of Monsieur Belichick?
Surely you know he's often an assholic turd, and his going for it on 4th against the Colts and saints was fully within character. Also, pulling your franchise QB when you are getting dominated and he can only get hurt... isn't a bad move in my book.
"Basically what happened Monday night was the coach forfeited a game in order to satisfy his crappy mood."
Really, I can't disagree more. Seeing him congratulate AND HUG Brees after the game, and be as gracious and generous as I've ever seen him in his post-game commentary doesn't match at all with this analysis.
The dude got out-coached and his team (which is a rung below previous Pats teams) got outplayed. And he knew it. That's the story.
I answered the above at the other website where it was posted. Meanwhile, why is it that I get three separate posts on NOLA.com compiling "What (the national, local, or Boston) media are saying about the Saints" PLUS a story about how Tom Benson celebrated mass this week PLUS a graphic depiction of the noise levels in the dome throughout the game PLUS a series of obsessive reporting on the Neilsen score for the Monday Night broadcast PLUS a story about cute songs about the Saints BUT not a single word about Mike Bell's injury late in the game which looked pretty bad from where I was sitting?
Seriously that one bit of actual information would be so much more helpful than the sea of bullshit which replaced it and yet...
I imagine you didn't read anything in the paper about Bell's injury because the Saints didn't provide the reporters with any information about it. Isn't that obvious? Injury reports are always sketchy right after a game, unless the extent of the injury is apparent like a broken leg, and even then there's always a delay when reporting a prognosis because of medical tests, etc. ... not to step on Jeffrey's crankiness.
I have definitely noticed that Payton has played the injury report extremely close to the vest this season. (Why is Lance Moore still out?) But he shouldn't be able to get away with that unless people covering the team agree to become co-conspirators with him.
I know it's a current vogue among NFL coaches to gamely deceive one another about these things. (I think they're being more than a little paranoid in this, btw) But it isn't the press's job to help them with their idiotic subterfuges. It is their job to report the facts for the sake of their readers, though. They should take this a bit more seriously.
If you knew 1/10th as much about football as you like to think you do, you'd be collecting a 7 figure paycheck doing it...
As it is...When it comes to football knowledge...You make a great New Orleans Area Political Blogger, Jeffrey...
