Given all of this, it seems likely the Saints can play every bit as well this season as they did last year and still finish with something like only 7, 8 or 9 wins. And factoring in the fact that the kicker sucks, I'll have to err on the down side of that and say we're looking at a very exciting, but somewhat disappointing 7-9 in 2007.
We should probably take a closer look at this. Not only because the staggering unlikely event of a Yellow-blogging prediction coming to pass in reality demands further examination, but also because the holidays have led us to neglect our football commentary over the past few weeks and it's better to just blow it all out now so we can begin 2008 with a clearer conscience.
And so now, a look back at the 2007 Saints: (There are photos. Most of them are stolen, as always, from NOLA.com)
- The season finale in Chicago actually began on a high note. We caught this one while taking advantage of the free Indian buffet provided by Nirvana to the patrons of the Rendezvous Tavern on Magazine Street. As the Saints emerged from the tunnel, I exclaimed over my plate of chicken, "Alright here come the gold pants!" At that same moment, the bar broke out in applause over the Saints' entrance. But I like to think they were applauding the pants. As well they should have been.
This season, five of the Saints' seven wins came while properly panted in their traditional gold. The Saints managed two wins in the black bicycle leggings although one of those wins was against the Jacksonville Jaguars who themselves sport a similar inappropriate black pant causing us to declare that game a pants push. This means that the 2007 Saints were a respectable 5-3 in gold pants and 1-6 in the black pants (minus the disqualified Jacksonville game).
Rumor has it that next year the Saints are due for some sort of uniform redesign. While we are hoping for a pleasant outcome, we are not optimistic. The Saints' basic uniform is one of the more classic and understated looks in professional sports with none of the offending swoops, body-length stripes, or superfluous teal we see so much of nowadays. There are so many ways they can mess this up. We already know what doesn't work.
When your Saints dejectedly trudge off the field, you want them to do so in a dignified uniform. Please don't screw this up next year. - Key stat of the 2007 season:
Reggie Bush 157 rushing attempts 581 yards (3.7 yds per carry) 4 touchdowns 8 fumbles
Not Reggie 191 attempts 792 yards (4.1 yds per carry) 6 touchdowns 2 fumbles
Against Chicago, Pierre Thomas alone had 105 yards rushing plus 121 yards receiving and a touchdown. Thomas and Aaron Stecker were the only Saints to go over 100 yards rushing in a game in 2007. Deuce McAllister was the best football player on the team in 2006. Any of these individuals is a far preferable backfield presence than the Reggie Bush twist, hop, and dive-for-the-sideline show.
Key stat of the 2007 season (1-A):
Mario Williams (Houston Texans): 59 Tackles 14 Sacks 2 Forced Fumbles 1 Touchdown.
You may continue sending your Thanks to Houston for selecting Williams one pick ahead of Bush if you are so inclined. Meanwhile, the rest of us are wondering if Bush is even worth a fourth round pick at this point.
Not Reggie appears to flo more freely than Reggie anyway - The Saints' defense could have used a defender of Williams's caliber. At its best this season, the Saints' D managed to appear to be more than the sum of its parts. Despite a stretch of eight consecutive games without surrendering a 100 yard game, the Saints still managed to finish a rather average 13th against the run. Against the pass, they were downright terrible.
The Saints gave up an average of 245 yards per game through the air placing them 30th out of 32 teams. Despite carrying two highly regarded and well-paid defensive ends in the starting line-up, the defense could never get a consistent pass-rush going. They totaled only 32 sacks as a team. Will Smith (7) and Charles Grant (2.5) combined for fewer sacks than Houston's Mario Williams racked up on his own. Things seemed to improve marginally on the few occasions when Brian Young was on the field and healthy, but it's obvious that the declining and fragile Young isn't the answer there either. I'd be surprised if he's back next year at all.
Where's the QB? Saints defenders had difficulty getting to the opposing passer all season long.
But it isn't just the line that's a problem here. At the end of last season, we remarked that the Saints' best linebacker and fan favorite, Scott Fujita would likely be a third or fourth guy on a decent roster. With this team, he's the leader. During the offseason, the Saints tried to upgrade this position signing free agents Dhani Jones and Brian Simmons. Neither could unseat Mark Simoneau or Scott Shanle as starters. Jones didn't even make the team. And so the Saints face another offseason of trying to plug the same hole they failed to plug this year.
The secondary was a mixed bag. Unfortunately the bad bits in that bag were really really bad. Roman Harper looks like he'll be around for a while. Harper is a versatile player who tackles well in run support and... unlike most of the D-line... creates pressure on the quarterback in blitz situations (his 4 sacks were better than Charles Grant's 2.5). Harper was second on the team in total tackles with 90 (only five behind Fujita). He's not the fastest guy, and we'd like to see him make a few more picks but he may get there yet.
Mike McKenzie had his best year as a Saint. Sure he only picked off 3 passes, but he brought two of them back for touchdowns. His score vs Jacksonville was the deciding play in that game. The bad news for McKenzie is that he doesn't have much time to recover from what looks like a pretty bad knee injury he suffered not recovering a Donovan Mcnabb fumble on a typically Saints-ish play early in the Philly game which resulted in both a devastating injury and a painfully stupid touchdown.
McKenzie can't believe what just happened despite having lived through four seasons as a Saint
When safety Josh "Never Mind The" Bullocks missed the Arizona game with an injury, Kevin Kaesviharn filled in so well that many fans figured him to have earned a starting role. But no, Bullocks was right back in there the next week and went on to have two particularly poor games.
Opposing quarterbacks combined for a 96.9 passer rating vs the Saints' defense. No other NFL defense was worse in 2007. Everything listed above contributed to this ignominious distinction. Well, all of that and one more thing... - Good Jason David: David, the Saints' marquee free agent acquisition of 2007, was good enough to save his best performance of the season for the final week against Chicago. In that game, David, surprisingly, was not seen falling down or peeking into the backfield or trailing behind opposing receivers as they streaked toward the end-zone. In the fourth quarter, David even made an interception that could have gotten the Saints back in the game were it not for subsequent unnecessary bravado from Coach Soupy.
Bad Jason David: Well there certainly was a lot of that. The Saints' marquee free agent acquisition of the offseason was a spectacular joke right from the very first game in Indianapolis where David was repeatedly humiliated by Colts receivers. In that game David alone surrendered 147 yards and three touchdowns. It was the first of many such disastrous performances for David who, over the course of 2007, developed from shameful disappointment to reliable scapegoat before finally attaining the status of supreme absurdist humor goldmine.
The ultimate punchline in the ongoing Jason David joke is that with McKenzie battling a career-threatening injury, David goes into 2008 as the Saints' most reliable starting corner. Obviously, this position will receive attention during the free-agency period and the draft. Let's hope it does not again receive the "marquee" attention it received last offseason.
Jason David. It only took him 16 games to figure it out. - I tend to be hyper-critical of Drew Brees. He had one of his bad games against Chicago where he often threw behind open receivers with occasional disastrous results. But it isn't necessary to harp on this because everyone knows that Brees is not the problem with this team.
In 2007 Drew Brees set an NFL record for number of passes completed in a season (440). He set team records for touchdown passes (28) completion percentage (67.5) and for passing yardage (4,423). But it's not the numbers that tell the tale of Drew Brees's performance in his two years as a Saint. Brees is not the biggest, strongest, or fastest of NFL quarterbacks but he is among the most efficient. When he makes occasional mistakes, they usually come in the form of slightly inaccurate passes. But we can live with that as long as he continues to display the excellent decision making skills and pocket presence that have kept this offense from falling apart the way it might have under less steady leadership.
At 28 Drew Brees is in the prime of his career. If the Saints find the right talent mix to put around him, and if his arm remains attached to his shoulder, there's no reason to believe he can't be a championship quarterback. But there's a lot of work to be done elsewhere.
The one-armed man is good enough to get it done... if he can keep that one arm from taking too many hits like this - One thing that needs to happen is the Saints need to have a better draft in 2008. Midway through the Eagles game, Brees had a pass batted back into his hands for a completed pass to himself. It was the second such play this season. Jim Henderson pointed out over the WWL broadcast that this means the Quarterback now has 2 more pass receptions than the receiver taken with the team's number one draft pick. That shouldn't happen.
- Uh oh the kicker sucked. How badly did that hurt? It may have been the factor that kept the Saints out of the playoffs. Observe.
In a comment below the Colts recap, Leo suggested that a missed kick at a crucial moment in that game helped swing the momentum in Indianapolis's favor. I observed a similar moment in the following game at Tampa Bay. Since both of those games were blowouts we'll count them as partial-kicker losses.
Mare's bumbling clearly cost the Saints the first Carolina game giving rise to speculation that he might be replaced. Instead, he survived long enough to badly injure himself at Atlanta allowing Saints fans to finally enjoy some kicking that didn't suck courtesy of Martin Gramatica and his amusing hair.
Gramatica contemplates his choices in hair care products... before deciding to simply buy more Soul Glo
Now, if we count the two partial losses together as one, we could conclude that the kicking suckery made a win-loss difference of two games this year. Give the Saints those two games and they're in the playoffs.
But it's probably only reasonable to count the Carolina game as a kicking loss. Even then, this means that not only was my predicted number of wins on the mark, but also my specific reasoning for going with 7 instead of 8 or 9 wins was spot on as well. This should really freak you out.
This offseason, we'd like to see a few things happen. First, if Reggie Bush has to come back, perhaps he'll work on dating fewer C-list celebrities this summer and start watching film of former Brown-Falcon-Charger Eric Metcalf. Metcalf entered the league as a running back. But his slim body and finesse running style suited him more to the receiver position as a pro where he excelled after making the move. Bush has similar talents to Metcalf and has already demonstrated that he contributes the most to the Saints' offense when lined up as a wideout. If Pierre Thomas is going to get more playing time, and especially if Deuce can come back at all, Coach Soupy should consider making this move.
Speaking of Soupy, the best advice we can offer the coach in 2008 is calm the fuck down before you kill any more Grandmas. Payton's tendency to prioritize the cute over the effective in his play calling cost the Saints at various crucial moments this year, most famously the final moments of the pivotal home game against Tampa. Payton's unnecessary aggressiveness also led him into questionable decisions to go for it on fourth down late in the Bears game and at the start of the third quarter on the goal line vs the Eagles. In each of these circumstances a field goal would have had a beneficial impact on the game. In the Philly game, the goal line stand may have been the deciding moment. Soupy strikes me as smarter than a lot of the cretins who populate the coaching profession. But he could still benefit from a bit more even-headedness in crucial game situations.
Finally, Saints fans need not despair. As I've stated repeatedly throughout this season, there is no reason to panic. The 2007 Saints lost two more games than they won this year. They weren't a great team. They weren't even a winning team. But they certainly had their moments. Besides, if you honestly only find the experience rewarding when your team wins, are you sure you're going about this sports fan business correctly in the first place?
With only one obvious exception that I can think of, this was a team made up of players who you genuinely like to pull for. As long as you still have the opportunity to do so, and as long as they still wear your Fleur-De-Lis, there really isn't any reason not to come back next year and watch this bunch (plus or minus a few "marquee" free agents) win another 7 or 8 games.
But for now, it's Carnival Time. Until next year, try not to Cease to Love.
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