It's slim pickins this year for the New Orleans Saints and long suffering Saint fans. Wait a minute, that last remark was a post tramatic stress reaction to decades of bad Saints teams. This is different and to us, it feels different. After all, this is Saints team with lots of the same players who took us to and won a Super Bowl. This is mostly the same Saint team that went 13-3 last year and barely missed out on the NFC championship team. This is the same Saint team that early on, even NFL experts picked as a possible host team playing a Super Bowl at home.
Enter bounty-gate and unprecedented penalties from a league that wanted to inflict punishment but evidently wanted to destroy the Saints. No head coach for a year, no GM for an extended period of time, no interim head coach for 6 games, loss of draft picks, etc. We boldly and perhaps arrogantly said bring it on. We have everything in place to weather this storm. Then we had a Drew Brees holdout, then a contract that while many believe justified, it helped usher the good bye forever ticket to 4 key players of the once proud Saint machine.
Looked like we would start the season in good shape. Nothing was revealed in preseason that would indicate disaster, although the defense looked problematic. Heck, the defense is always problematic, we just dominate the game when Drew and the O are on the field. Then the early schedule has the Saints playing Washington, Carolina and KC. No concerns here. But after they strapped it up and played between the lines the Saints were 0-3 and facing an almost equally desperate Green Bay. Despite actually outplaying the Pack, the Saints still find new and innovative ways to lose, including a missed FG after an unbelievable holding penalty that wiped out a good FG just moments earlier. Any way you cut it, this is a team that is 0-4 with a very bad defense; I mean worst in the league kinda bad. Now we can add to that a running game that is poor, a much less effective Drew Brees(making about 2 million gross per game in 2012), receivers dropping almost as many balls as they catch and a O-line that has just the big breakdown at just the wrong time. Now throw in a FG kicker that has missed 2 important kicks so far this year. And don't forget the lack of leadership on the sidelines. This poor guy, Cromer, seems so far in over his head. Sad. Sean Payton's lack of presence is now palpable.
How bad will this season be Only time will tell. But I don't see the team winning too many games just based on the defense alone. The schedule down the road won't help much either. I hate doing this but I'll predict 6-10 best case. And I hope I'm wrong.
As much as I never thought I would see the Saints in the Super Bowl, let alone win it, I never thought this team, still made in Sean Payton's image and led by Drew Brees, would be this bad this soon. It is what it is. Somehow, I'll probably keep watching and keep getting in trouble with my comments on facebook. Unlike others, at least I'm not pulling out the paper bag yet!
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