Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20 @ New Orleans Saints 17: The View from Section 140

Nobody played with any intensity after the first quarter. Several players were awful. This was a team loss.

They haven’t shown me anything since the New England game. The Saints still don’t know how to win. Their experienced players don’t have a whole season in them because they are over the hill or a step too slow. I want them to recover and I want to believe but I’m just disheartened at this point. So many let downs in one game. And it’s not just this game but the past 8 games or so. Sure we pulled out a bunch of victories. But if we don’t go into the playoffs hot then it was all a waste of time. Guess what? We aren’t going into the playoffs hot. We have one game against a resurgent Carolina team who has a monster d-line. I’m not only concerned about our next game but I do not think the Saints will win it. We are a bad football team right now, folks. And our record doesn’t reflect who we have become.

Two requests:
1. the predictions thread doesn’t get a vote when we lose. Why bother? We can’t be asked to pick against our beloved team (that stabs us in the back like a cheating wife.)
2. no player get to be selected for anything when we lose. Not when we suck this much.

Somebody else said the coaches deserve an F. F that. The players played like crap. Even the long snapper couldn’t get snapping the ball right when he was touched…and that was right before the touchdown we gave up. The coaches called a conservative game. But they put the team in a position to win and the players didn’t execute.

We’re playing the Panthers, who are really hot right now. If we can slow them down, it’ll show me alot, please Saints, show me that you guys are legit

This was officially the most pathetic showing of football by the Saints that I have seen. This was a team loss every way you look at it. The only guy who dared to show up to play was Pierre Thomas, and we saw what happened to him. A couple of things I am absolutely fuming about is the pure retardedness of our coaching. We were all singing the praises of Gregg Williams earlier this season, but now that his defense looks the same if not worse than the one Joe Gibbs ran I think he should hit the road. He has got to be the absolute WORST coach I have ever seen when it comes to adjusting mid-game or game-to-game. We have mounting injuries and Williams just continues to say “Oh I expect the next guy to step right in and perform at the same level as the first guy”. Are you kidding me? Listen, maybe you should teach your corners to play 5-7 yards off and check their guy down, instead of having them play 10-12 yards off while they stare into the backfield and get burned by a less than mediocre WR. That’s bad technique ALL DAY, we got burned like that on pretty much every pass play, and that’s why we give up more yards than the LIONS per game.

Any route they ran they had 5 yards cushion pretty much all the time, and it doesn’t help when you have your first round draft pick chasing the coattails of a tight end, I’m officially giving up on Jenkins as a corner, he just cannot play that spot.

 A lot of the underneath passes and outside runs should’ve been stopped if we didn’t have such a crappy LB like Scott “Pretty Boy” Fujita. I’m not blaming anything on Casillas today because 1. He’s a rookie and this is his first playing time and 2. Because he played a nice game and was making a bunch of tackles. Fujita is slow in recognizing plays, and he’s slow to the outside because he always takes a bad angle at the ball carrier, much like Jenkins does.

Not to mention there’s not a damn person on this team that can stop the run. Why does a bum like Ayodele get so much coaching praise, just for getting pushed out of the way on every play? He’s not good. I can’t complain about Smith or Grant today, except that Smith couldn’t make the big play when he needed to in OT as Freeman slipped away.

Idk what’s going on with Big Sed, but idt he’s healthy yet. Sharper seems tired. Harper seems ineffective in just about every way. And Vilma is playing great.

But my final burns on defense have to go on Malcolm Jenkins and Mike McKenzie. Jenkins is slower than we all had expected, not only than but when he get’s behind he’s only worried about sprinting to keep up with the receiver or TE completely forgetting that he needs to make a play on the ball. Next thing you know the ball hits in a very blockable window and Jenkins usually winds up pushing the guy out of bounds. Mike McKenzie really loves to play 15 yards off. He also likes to torpedo tackle. Both of those are reasons he’s been getting burned since that great performance against the Patriots.

Yeah the Saints have a knack for torching real good teams like New England, philly, giants. But lose to the worst teams in the NFL. It doesnt make any sense

Just about every team in the NFL seem to be improving as the season progresses except the Saints. Should we consider ourselves lucky since this is nothing new for us?
Losing like men fighting hard is nothing to be ashamed about, but this game was pitifull. Players and coaches. Plain pitifull

Because Sean Payton forgot who he had quarterbacking and who was going catch the ball, oh and because he quit running the ball on the 4th possession of the game which completely threw off our rhythm for the rest of the game. Listen, the FG decisions were the right ones, but the bad decisions were the 50 million underneath passes and the abandoning of the run when we decided to get “cute” after being up 17 points.

At the start of our 4th possession he took about 2 deep shots if I recall correctly, one of which Drew threw into TRIPLE coverage. The plan and play calling went out the window and from there it was either run for a loss, poorly executed screen, or an underneath pass to Dave Thomas. That was literally the play calling from after the 4th possession til the end of the game. The problem with the offense is that they have not been attacking the weaknesses of the opponents defense like our opponents have been doing to us. Instead we just quit with our gameplan and go to some half-ass, over-conservative play calling crap. That’s not the Saints. The Saints this year ran with authority and beat secondaries over the top. As the season has gone on we have swayed away from that plan and gone with the mutant, incestuous step child of and offense we all saw today.

The offensive line has been bad as of late, and in today’s game the trouble came from within the middle of the line. Blitzers just ran by our guys and had their way with pressuring Drew, and even though I love Drew I will say that when he has the kind of pressure where he can’t step into the pocket he usually gets sacked, throws a pick, or fumbles it (see Cowboys game)

All in all last weeks loss was a team loss because no one showed up to play some football, the same thing happened today and we have ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BELIEVE that we will win next week because the past 5,6,7 weeks the Saints have played consistently bad on all 3 sides of the ball. We peaked too soon, and now we’re looking at a very possible early exit from the playoffs.

Coaches and players can say they’re not concerned all they want. Hell some of them, maybe all of them aren’t, but they very well should be because they have been getting out played by NFL bottom feeders, and truly in todays game there should be guaranteed victories, but when teams from top to bottom become arrogant and look past games and get beat by a bunch of second rate players, then you truly have an area of concern.

what FA kickers are available, and would it be awkward if we brought Kevin Houser back? just wonderin…

Maybe a priest can cast out the re-appearance of the Haslet / A. Brooks Saints.

Sure looks that way unless they make some serious adjustments and regain their confidence back. That spark has been gone for a month.

Everything after the first two scoring drives was vanilla as far as I could see. The D-backs were playing way off the ball and the D-line was doing nothing but standing up in lanes while the D-ends were running straight up the field with no moves.

The offense got away from the running game and went straight to short/intermediate passes. Pretty vanilla.

But, 13-2. Nothing to sneeze at, folks.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Japan, Y’all! Keep the Faith!!

Our best shot at success in the playoffs is to treat the last game of the season vs. the Panthers as though it’s a meaningless game regardless of if the outcome has any bearing on home field advantage or not. Don’t play starters or do so sparingly at most. The reasons for this thinking are:

• The team I’ve seen over the past four games isn’t going to win regardless of who we do or don’t play anyway.
• There isn’t a bigger momentum killer than losing the last 3 games of the season when you are fielding the best team possible.
• As we have got to be the most injury prone team in the league, we reduce that possibility.
• And, most importantly. Getting home field advantage for the second game of the playoffs is only important IF we get to the second game. The way the Vikings are playing, we may get it even if we lose the last 3 games anyway. And, as evidenced by today’s game, home field advantage may not even be that important.

What we do instead is go back to the drawing board as though the first game of the playoffs were the first game of a new season. I like our chances with healthy, rested starters more than the prospect of the alternative of playing eveyone this weekend and probably losing anyway. As far as the over worked idea of them losing their “rhythm”; they don’t have any rhythm to lose right now. I think this is our best shot at recapturing what we had at the beginning of the season. The alternative to this idea is certainly not working.

a few thoughts:

1. We definitely went into a shell in the 3rd quarter. We appeared to be content to run the ball with our 4th HB,, run the clock and wait for the bucs to shoot themselves in the foot. We allowed them to hang around and 2 big mistakes (Colston fumble, crappy punt/crappy punt coverage leading to punt return TD) made it a whole new ballgame.
2. don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but our 2 minute drills over the last 2 weeks have been downright awful. Against Dallas at the end of the 1st half we get the ball down 14-3 with a chance to cut it to 14-7 or 14-10 after being dominated and we cough it up deep in our territory. Then to close the game, It takes us 2 minutes to go 30 yards. Today, we go 3 and out inside 2 minutes, and give it back to the bucs, leading to their first 3 points.Finally to close the game, we moved the ball but inexplicably wasted 20-30 seconds. We sure could’ve used that time to get closer for the FG or even score a TD. Don’t know what the deal is.
3. Jenkins is not a starting corner in this league. I hate to say it, but you don’t get consistently smoked like he does and develop into a good one. The really good ones may get burned from time to time when they’re young, but not on every play. Perhaps he’ll be a good safety or nickel.
4. lots of discussion about our crappy D and while it is true they have been bad the offense is the problem. Look we know what we have in our D. They are average at best as a basic D. They excel in forcing TOs, especially when the other team is behind and forced to pass the ball. As bad as they’ve looked the last 2 weeks, they gave up 24 points to a hot Dallas offense and 13 to Tampa.
5. I’m as disappointed at this loss as any I can remember, and boy did I want homefield, but part of me hopes the Vikes win tomorrow. In my opinion, we need to go into next week, against a very hot panthers team that has had our number in recent years, NEEDING that game. We need to get our swag back and playing mark brunell and lynell hamilton because we backed into homefield won’t get that done. Maybe being on the road in a hostile environment will be good for this team. I’m still clinging to a small flicker of hope that we can turn this thing around, but a loss next week will all but snuff that out
   We’re about to find out for sure what this team is made of. Let’s hope it wasn’t all smoke and mirrors.

don’t know how anyone can blame them. In spite of our offense scoring 0 pts in the second half, we only gave up 1 td on defense. The punt return wasn’t the defense’s fault. Don’t know how you can blame defense for this one.

I didn’t get to see anything but the last few minutes of game (not showing here) but Payton went back to pass-happy Payton based on the stats I read. I don’t get it! I’m afraid it’s possible we’ll go one and done in playoffs. Don’t think we will but if we don’t remedy this, it’s going to happen. Payton needs to learn to chill out with the cute stuff.

The Ain’t are coming, Shouda Woulda Coulda The Ain’t are coming

I am a fan from 1970 and let me tell you guys I think they threw the Dallas game , it was obvious they stopped playing in the 1st quarter in the Tampa game the offense that is.

This is the thing The Ain’t looked like the 2-11 team and Tampa looked like the 13-1 team after the 1st quarter

I don’t buy Saints logo material but my son bought me a division champs shirt I burned it yesterday

Next week I’ll do like I did in 05 pull for the other team, I don’t want them to have home field advantage

13-2 but they did get people to buy buy buy they laughed all the way to the bank

I convinced that home field would not be an advantage in the playoffs. They should rest their starters against the Panthers. If they win, fine. If they don’t, which seems more likely, who cares. IF they can’t beat the Bucs at home, it doesn’t matter.

Jrickey70, maybe you’ve gotten to the point where you are spoiled with Drew Brees and don’t appreciate him. . Very few QBs complete 19 passes in a row, even short ones. It’s the NFL. Everyone on the other side of the ball is getting paid $100,000s or $1,000,000 s to not let that happen. It’s not as easy as you might think. Tell me, when was the last time you did it??

I ain’t gonna lie … Seah Payton looks like an ape in that picture.

Bullets:

+ Seats were in the corner of the endzone – arrived in time to watch the Saints warm up – SWEET – and they ran through the tunnel just below us to go into the locker room before the game – I went down there as they jogged/walked through and hollered shout-outs to head trainer Scottie Patton, Morstead, and Usama. Brunell looked up and smiled and waved at the fans cheering for them. Funniest moment at this time was when Tom and Gayle Benson came through the area, too. This old lady standing next to me said, “I can’t even look at her! See all those diamonds and jewels???” Her friends nodded and assented, and then I said, “I bet no matter what the economy is doing, she always has a good Christmas!” We all shared a hearty laugh. Oh, ho!!!

+ I was glad the little girl sang the national anthem. I like classic, straight-up performances like that much better than some american-idol wannabe warbling out some tricked-out version of the song that sounds nothing like Mr. Scott Key ever could have imagined.

+ The end zone seats also gave me a great view of both Saints offensive TDs right in front of me. PT’s run was sweet – they opened up a HUGE hole for him. On Meach’s catch, as I saw him break open behind the defender and then saw Brees cock to throw, I stood up with my arms raised and screamed “TOUCHDOWN!!!!!” and then he caught the ball. AWESOME

+ I was hoarse before the first quarter ended. Screaming every time the Bucs huddled until after the snap. The energy was there in the first half, but it was gone in the second half, that’s for sure. I screamed throughout the second half, too, but it didn’t seem to work as well as it did in the first.

+ From our vantage point, it was really hard to tell that all those 32 completions weren’t for more yards. We’d stand up and holler after a catch, and then look at each other and ask, “Third and 7?? How was that only a 2-yard gain?”

+ The vantage point was also excellent on the punt return TD. I saw the lane for Spurlock open up like the Red Sea did for Moses. UGH.

+ It was really hard to watch the Bucs run Cadillac straight at us 9 out of 10 plays (along with the Freeman 3rd down scramble) to get the winning FG. And it was representative of the terrible tackling that happened the entire second half.

+ I don’t fault the defense too much. They came up with two big stops in the second half that we turned into 0 points. And the way they’ve been playing lately, that’s more than I expected. I’m much more concerned about the offensive failures – is it play-calling? execution? I honestly do not know the answer.

+ I’m not even close to giving up on this team. I love the Saints, I’m disappointed with how they played yesterday, and I will continue to yell and cheer for them until I die. I now wonder which team will show up next week, and in the divisional round of the playoffs – the juggernaut from the first 10 games, the ineffective team from the last two weeks, or maybe some new version/combination of both those teams…finally healthy on both sides of the ball, with confidence from our early wins, but also having learned much from our last 5 games. Only time will tell…

WHO DAT?

+ BTW, the Santa Saints hat I wore yesterday in hopes of exorcising the demons of a 3-game losing streak of wearing it to Saints games I actually attend will soon be stuffed into a garbage can in the Chicago (Midway) airport on my way back to Louisville. Prior to yesterday, this hat lost against the Rams at the Dome on Christmas Eve in 2000 (the week before Hakim dropped the ball), it lost at the Dome on the December MNF game against the Rams in 2001 (that started our 4-game losing streak to finish Haslet’s second year), and it lost at Cincinnati on a cold December Sunday in 2002, as AB and the Saints choked on a 13-7 lead to the woeful one-win Bengals. The 2002 season also didn’t finish well for us. Remember watching 9-4 and in the driver’s seat for hosting a wild card game turn into 9-7 and out of the playoffs????

You have no idea how much I envy you guys, win, lose, or draw! Have a good time for all of us, ok? Thanks.