Well today we celebrated the birthday of the Saint par excellence, Mary our Mother. And tonight I prepare to spend a quiet Thursday evening with the Saints, as in the 2009-10 Super Bowl champion Saints. And what a matchup they draw on this opening night of another NFL season: the 2010-11 Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers. In any event, it still gives me a bit of a thrill that time has yet to dull the words New Orleans Saints and Super Bowl champs in the same sentence.
We must, of course, move on from that magical, wonderful year where the Saints dominated the NFL to claim Super Bowl 44. The coaches and players surely have. Heck, many of our champion Saints are no longer Saints. This is a new year, a new challenge and a pretty tough task ahead; to beat the defending champs on their turf. Not just any turf; the hallowed ground of Lambeau Field.
Just a year ago the Saints were given the honor of hosting the season opener as defending champs and they dispatched the Vikings. That continued a pattern of the defending champ always winning opening night since the games were moved to a Thursday night. We may also remember how Indianapolis took us apart a few years back on opening night. So is this an insurmountable bad omen for this years version of the New Orleans Saints? Probably not. The winner tonight will be the team that plays better, scores more points(duh), has the fewer mistakes and wins the turnover battle.
Now all we can do is countdown to kickoff. And I will be cheering for a great game and truly hoping for a big Saints victory. But we must tee it up and play it between the lines.
Geaux Saints; thanks for being a sports team that our entire region can rally around and love. Break the cycle tonight: beat the Packers!
No comments:
Post a Comment