Showing posts with label New Orleans Saints. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Orleans Saints. Show all posts
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Hold the Line(s)
Today, Peter Finney wrings his hands in The Times-Picayune about the condition of the Saints' offensive and defensive lines. They weren't impressive, but they were my one source of concern going into Thursday's game simply because of the amount of change in both units during a very short pre-season. Our O line has two new bodies in Olin Kreutz and Zach Streif (as a starter), and our front seven on defensive is undergoing major transition, particularly in the first two weeks with Will Smith out. With all that change going on, it didn't surprise me that they didn't play as well as units as they needed to, and I suspect if that game took place a month from now, we'd see a stouter set of lines.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
ESPN's Fickle and Had Bad Taste
ESPN has a new boyfriend in the NFC. A few weeks ago, the sports networks was steady on the arm of Mike Vick and all his new hunky pals on the Philadelphia Eagles. Eagles were "The Dream(y) Team" and were obviously ready for the Super Bowl.
After the preseason suggested that the Eagles' offensive line may have trouble protecting Vick and opening holes for Ronnie Brown, ESPN's love has moved to the Atlanta Falcons. This morning, on "Mike and Mike," Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic picked Atlanta to win the NFC South (neither see the Saints even earning a wild card spot in the playoffs!), and Golic has the Falcons going to the Super Bowl.
Later in the morning, Colin Cowherd spoke out against the conventional wisdom that put the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl in favor of the Falcons because the Falcons have a very forgiving schedule. The only problem with that analysis is that the Saints have a very similar schedule with two breaks the Falcons don't get. Saints play the Bears in the Superdome while the Falcons have to go to Chicago. The Falcons face one more Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback (one of Cowherd's yardsticks) in Michael Vick when they play the Eagles in a game that's sure to have Twilight-like implications in the battle for ESPN's love, while the Saints play the wounded New York Giants and the boy-next-door Eli Manning.
I'm always surprised by how much statistical information ESPN collects before throwing it all out in favor of the results it wants or the intangibles its narratives.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Don't Say "Extreme" Unless You Mean It
WWL-870 has dubbed its coverage of the Saints' preseason "X-Treme Camp Coverage." If nobody's on a skateboard or spinning a bike in the air, calling yourself "extreme" simply draws attention to how old and not-extreme you are.
For me, the only thing extreme about WWL's coverage of the Saints is the extreme rage I feel listening to Deke Bellavia ramble. As someone who conducts interviews, I'm irritated by TV and radio sports reporters' tendency to ask a question and feed the athlete the answer in the question. A typical question might be, "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent?" The Deke version takes that to the "extreme": "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent? Because I know you're sort of player who just tries to give it his all every day, every snap, and you know that you can't look down the line and overlook any opponent in the NFL. Are you just trying to work on your game and contributing to your unit and letting the chips fall where they may? Because one thing we know about the NFL is that nothing goes as planned, and as soon as you think you know what's going to happen, everything changes."
Needless to say, the cavalcade of inanity prompts cliche-prone interview subjects under the best of circumstances to pull the cliche shell up higher than ever as they address the general subject of training camp, the only thing they could hang on to out of all blather.
For me, the only thing extreme about WWL's coverage of the Saints is the extreme rage I feel listening to Deke Bellavia ramble. As someone who conducts interviews, I'm irritated by TV and radio sports reporters' tendency to ask a question and feed the athlete the answer in the question. A typical question might be, "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent?" The Deke version takes that to the "extreme": "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent? Because I know you're sort of player who just tries to give it his all every day, every snap, and you know that you can't look down the line and overlook any opponent in the NFL. Are you just trying to work on your game and contributing to your unit and letting the chips fall where they may? Because one thing we know about the NFL is that nothing goes as planned, and as soon as you think you know what's going to happen, everything changes."
Needless to say, the cavalcade of inanity prompts cliche-prone interview subjects under the best of circumstances to pull the cliche shell up higher than ever as they address the general subject of training camp, the only thing they could hang on to out of all blather.
Monday, February 8, 2010
I Hate to Throw Stones, But ...
... are there any standards in sports writing? I know music writers have little room to speak, but here's one of the dumbest things I've seen written after the Super Bowl, this by the Louisville Mojo's Billy Reed:
Bad Karma Beat the Colts
The New Orleans Saints didn't beat the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl as much as bad karma did. You should not mess around with Mother Nature, or, apparently the gods of football. The Colts should never have blown off their opportunity to go unbeaten.
By winning their first 14 regular-season games, the Colts put themselves in position to join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only NFL team to ever reign as unbeaten Super Bowl champions. It's a hollowed goal worth achieving. Yet instead of pursuing it, the Colts blew it off.
They went in the tank in their last two regular-season games, gift-wrapping victories for the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills by putting their starters on the sidelines. The goal, said Colts' president Bill Polian and coach Jim Caldwell, was winning the Super Bowl, not going unbeaten.
They could have achieved both, Instead, the got neither. By blowing the Super Bowl to the underdog Saints, the Colts got what they deserved in the eyes of those who believe that every team has an obligation – to itself, its fans, and the integrity of the game – to try to win every time it puts on the uniform.
- Evidently players and talent have nothing to do with results; it's all about keeping the football gods happy. Of course, the other team that thwarted the game's integrity, sat its players down and didn't try in the final week was the New Orleans Saints. I guess the football gods were too busy stewing over the Colts' sins to properly smite the Saints.
I have yet to see the team good enough to orchestrate its place in history. The Colts tried it and got on the wrong side of karma. You tempt the gods at your own risk. When the Colts did their tank jobs against the Jets and Bills, you can bet that George Halas, Paul Brown and Vince Lombardi were frowning up in Hoghide Heaven.
- This is pretty Aristotelian now, with Jim Caldwell punished for his hubris. Do we blind him now or later?
Other than money, why play at all if you are not going to play for your place in history? Exactly 44 teams now have won the Super Bowl, but only one has been crowned as an unbeaten Super Bowl champion. The '72 Dolphins set the bar high and so far nobody has been able to vault it.
Those who have come closest – the New England Patriots of a couple of years ago, for example – have failed not from lack of effort, but because they weren't quite good enough. We'll never know if the Colts were good enough because Polian and Caldwell, playing God, took their fate into their own hands.
- Wait, so talent does matter? Now I'm confused. Or, did the football gods conspire to saddle the Pats with an inferior team? Those insidious gods!
Of course, there's also this: Maybe the Saints are just better. Maybe the Saints would have won even if the Colts had come into the Super Bowl unbeaten.
The Saints Sean Payton out-coached Caldwell, catching the Colts unprepared with some new offensive and defensive wrinkles. His decision to open the second half with an onside kick was one of the guttiest in Super Bowl history. And in the end, after an incredible duel of surpassing excellence, it was the Colts' MVP quarterback, Peyton Manning, who cracked instead of his New Orleans counterpart, Purdue product Drew Brees.
With the Colts down by only seven and driving, Manning threw an interception that Saints cornerback Tracy Porter, a native of Louisiana and a second-round draft pick from LSU, grabbed and returned 74 yards to blow the game open.
It was not a hard play. Porter simply moved around and in front of Manning's intended receiver, Reggie Wayne, and took Manning's pass right in the numbers. Yards from reaching the end zone, Porter began pointing at Saints fans in the stands, touching off a wild celebration both in Sun Life Stadium and on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
- What's a discussion of football doing in this column?
It was a marvelous spiritual victory for a city still coming back from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, the 2006 natural disaster that brought the Gulf Coast region to its knees. The Saints' home, the New Orleans Superdome, was seriously damaged, but still served as a shelter for refugees.
- What time is it? Cliche o'clock, time for stock piety!
As fate would have it, Peyton Manning also is a native of New Orleans. He was born there during the dark early years of the Saints franchise, when his father, Archie, was taking weekly beatings as the Saints' QB. The team was so bad that they became known as the Aints and fans took to wearing paper sacks over their heads.
- "Oh, cruel fate," Peyton says, "Why dost thou trifle with me so? Why must I play my father's keeper? And what's that tired reference to 1980 doing in this paragraph?"
The victory comes in the midst of Mardi Gras and is guaranteed to do what was previously thought to be impossible, which is send the festival to new levels of drunkenness and debauchery. But that's OK.
It's great to see New Orleans alive and well and strutting again.
Heck, I'll bet that if you look carefully during the Mardi Gras parade, you might just see the gods of football riding a float through the French Quarter. They still rule the game, you see, and woe be to the team that defies them.
- What time is it? Cliche o'five, time for a sidehanded slap at our partying and an anachronistic reference to floats in the French Quarter, something that hasn't happened in my 20-plus years in New Orleans.
To be fair to Billy Reed, he's hardly alone in his love of the intangibles. The Saints were supposedly doomed against the Cardinals because the Cards were "hot," having played a shootout against the Packers in the wild card game while the Saints rested players for two weeks. What's a team to do if it has no momentum, like the Cards and Cowboys? Evidently, sit home and watch the Super Bowl on TV. This week,the Saints were underdogs because they lacked experience in the Super Bowl. I gather inexperienced teams would lose all professionalism and roll up like pillbugs at the feet of Carrie Underwood when faced with the prospect of playing the nation's biggest game in front of its biggest audience. Ask the Colts how that experience worked out for them. Bottom line: Intangibles vs. actual football stuff - go with the stuff.
Bad Karma Beat the Colts
The New Orleans Saints didn't beat the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl as much as bad karma did. You should not mess around with Mother Nature, or, apparently the gods of football. The Colts should never have blown off their opportunity to go unbeaten.
By winning their first 14 regular-season games, the Colts put themselves in position to join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only NFL team to ever reign as unbeaten Super Bowl champions. It's a hollowed goal worth achieving. Yet instead of pursuing it, the Colts blew it off.
They went in the tank in their last two regular-season games, gift-wrapping victories for the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills by putting their starters on the sidelines. The goal, said Colts' president Bill Polian and coach Jim Caldwell, was winning the Super Bowl, not going unbeaten.
They could have achieved both, Instead, the got neither. By blowing the Super Bowl to the underdog Saints, the Colts got what they deserved in the eyes of those who believe that every team has an obligation – to itself, its fans, and the integrity of the game – to try to win every time it puts on the uniform.
- Evidently players and talent have nothing to do with results; it's all about keeping the football gods happy. Of course, the other team that thwarted the game's integrity, sat its players down and didn't try in the final week was the New Orleans Saints. I guess the football gods were too busy stewing over the Colts' sins to properly smite the Saints.
I have yet to see the team good enough to orchestrate its place in history. The Colts tried it and got on the wrong side of karma. You tempt the gods at your own risk. When the Colts did their tank jobs against the Jets and Bills, you can bet that George Halas, Paul Brown and Vince Lombardi were frowning up in Hoghide Heaven.
- This is pretty Aristotelian now, with Jim Caldwell punished for his hubris. Do we blind him now or later?
Other than money, why play at all if you are not going to play for your place in history? Exactly 44 teams now have won the Super Bowl, but only one has been crowned as an unbeaten Super Bowl champion. The '72 Dolphins set the bar high and so far nobody has been able to vault it.
Those who have come closest – the New England Patriots of a couple of years ago, for example – have failed not from lack of effort, but because they weren't quite good enough. We'll never know if the Colts were good enough because Polian and Caldwell, playing God, took their fate into their own hands.
- Wait, so talent does matter? Now I'm confused. Or, did the football gods conspire to saddle the Pats with an inferior team? Those insidious gods!
Of course, there's also this: Maybe the Saints are just better. Maybe the Saints would have won even if the Colts had come into the Super Bowl unbeaten.
The Saints Sean Payton out-coached Caldwell, catching the Colts unprepared with some new offensive and defensive wrinkles. His decision to open the second half with an onside kick was one of the guttiest in Super Bowl history. And in the end, after an incredible duel of surpassing excellence, it was the Colts' MVP quarterback, Peyton Manning, who cracked instead of his New Orleans counterpart, Purdue product Drew Brees.
With the Colts down by only seven and driving, Manning threw an interception that Saints cornerback Tracy Porter, a native of Louisiana and a second-round draft pick from LSU, grabbed and returned 74 yards to blow the game open.
It was not a hard play. Porter simply moved around and in front of Manning's intended receiver, Reggie Wayne, and took Manning's pass right in the numbers. Yards from reaching the end zone, Porter began pointing at Saints fans in the stands, touching off a wild celebration both in Sun Life Stadium and on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
- What's a discussion of football doing in this column?
It was a marvelous spiritual victory for a city still coming back from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, the 2006 natural disaster that brought the Gulf Coast region to its knees. The Saints' home, the New Orleans Superdome, was seriously damaged, but still served as a shelter for refugees.
- What time is it? Cliche o'clock, time for stock piety!
As fate would have it, Peyton Manning also is a native of New Orleans. He was born there during the dark early years of the Saints franchise, when his father, Archie, was taking weekly beatings as the Saints' QB. The team was so bad that they became known as the Aints and fans took to wearing paper sacks over their heads.
- "Oh, cruel fate," Peyton says, "Why dost thou trifle with me so? Why must I play my father's keeper? And what's that tired reference to 1980 doing in this paragraph?"
The victory comes in the midst of Mardi Gras and is guaranteed to do what was previously thought to be impossible, which is send the festival to new levels of drunkenness and debauchery. But that's OK.
It's great to see New Orleans alive and well and strutting again.
Heck, I'll bet that if you look carefully during the Mardi Gras parade, you might just see the gods of football riding a float through the French Quarter. They still rule the game, you see, and woe be to the team that defies them.
- What time is it? Cliche o'five, time for a sidehanded slap at our partying and an anachronistic reference to floats in the French Quarter, something that hasn't happened in my 20-plus years in New Orleans.
To be fair to Billy Reed, he's hardly alone in his love of the intangibles. The Saints were supposedly doomed against the Cardinals because the Cards were "hot," having played a shootout against the Packers in the wild card game while the Saints rested players for two weeks. What's a team to do if it has no momentum, like the Cards and Cowboys? Evidently, sit home and watch the Super Bowl on TV. This week,the Saints were underdogs because they lacked experience in the Super Bowl. I gather inexperienced teams would lose all professionalism and roll up like pillbugs at the feet of Carrie Underwood when faced with the prospect of playing the nation's biggest game in front of its biggest audience. Ask the Colts how that experience worked out for them. Bottom line: Intangibles vs. actual football stuff - go with the stuff.
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