Wait Til Last Year Part 1

January 24, 2010 was a hell of a day. Prior to a few sentences in the post below this one, the sum total of my remarks on this event to date can be found here. At this late hour, I'm still finding it difficult to call up a more precise language with which to describe the events of that day. It's still all very hazy. Maybe the emotional memory is still that overwhelming. Or maybe it's because I only slept about three hours last night. But I'm still not sure I put the thing together. Luckily there are pictures.



Wow what an amazing day to be out and about. And also full of these which likely contributed some to the haze.



So what I do remember isn't very crisp but certainly intense. I remember trying to cross Perdido Street but being held up by a random parade of dune buggies. I remember encountering multiple random second lines. One of them I distinctly remember was playing "Let's go get em" (like this here) which was just the most perfect circumstance under which I've encountered that riff. I remember walking up the Poydras Street Superdome ramp and thinking to myself that this was the same ramp I'd walked up in January of 1988 when my folks brought me to see the first ever Saints playoff game. Against Minnesota. We had lost that one 44-10. And here I was 22 years later walking up that ramp, amped up, as full of liquor, righteousness and wrath as I'd ever been.

I still can't talk that much about the game. It was scary. I know I spent most of it screaming angrily about the perverted favoritism the game officials displayed toward Favre and the Vikings throughout. We all know about the absurd media narrative that has since sprung up around a contrary version of these events. I find this shocking, insulting, and further evidence of an ingrained media prejudice against this city. I'm still pretty raw over it but I forced myself to watch this game over again once this summer just to see if I had, perhaps through the haze, gotten it wrong somehow. But no, the Saints were getting hosed most of the night. Like I said, I still don't really want to talk about it. BSJD breaks down some of what I'm getting at here if you're interested. Meanwhile we're just going to skip to the end right now.

So here's what I remember. The game is in overtime. Everyone in the stadium is physically and emotionally exhausted. The Saints have the ball on the Minnesota 41. They have the ball for the moment anyway since Pierre Thomas' 4th and 1 plunge is currently under review. The play has been ruled a first down on the field so we're fairly sure the Saints will maintain possession but it sure is taking a long time. It was at about this moment that I started moving up and down the aisles of Section 617 approaching every Saints fan I could get to in the time allotted (friend of stranger... mostly strangers), laying a bear hug on each and telling them as sincerely as I could, "No matter what happens here, I love you. I love each and every one of you people" Yeah, I was pretty wasted.

The official emerges from the replay hood and signals a first down. There are a few more plays, another replay delay, a timeout, and some more anxious moments as Garrett Hartley lines up for what looks like a makeable field goal. I can remember a little bit about waiting for the kick but mostly what I still see in my minds eye is the ball lifting to the full height of its arc, "Get in there, dammit!" And then I blacked out. Really everything went dark and quiet for a second. I came back to when I heard the crowd roar. And then... HOLY FUCKING SHIT! and so forth.

But really I don't remember much after that. Luckily there are a few pictures.







Maybe later this season, I'll be able to write a little bit about the Super Bowl. But I'm still not quite over that one either.

Wait. What? More football? But we won football already. Shit, well, if we gotta.

• Obviously Drew Brees isn't quite over it either: I mean, come on. Dear New Orleans is bad enough, but do you really have to go the whole nine and actually play cheerleader too? Look, I know we live in a looser age where the coaches routinely write movie scripts and goofy T-shirt slogans aren't laughed right out of the locker room and all the players are in the Tweeter Tube and whatnot. But sometimes preening and lack of focus is still preening and lack of focus. And sometimes I still think these guys have let their success go to their heads a bit. And maybe that's okay too. I mean, how often has a Saints Super Bowl championship come around? I know I'm not taking this season very seriously, I'm not gonna blame the Saints for blowing it off too. But I do get the impression they may be blowing it off a bit.



• The Superdome doubles as a storm shelter: Right now it is raining buckets on the NFL's stupid, over-commercialized un-New Orleans Taylor Swift concert and corporate sponsored parade. Good. Fuck em. This week I watched the ESPN "Insiders' NFL Special" where a panel of experts remarked that New Orleans celebrated the Super Bowl win "more than any other city has ever celebrated a Super Bowl" only they meant it in a bad way. It was as if they were saying, once again, people don't know how to behave down here. At the same time, that's going on, here's a video NFL.com released this week. Apparently Saints fans are too excited about their team but also they don't get mention among the "NFL's best bases" (Also fuck you, Darren Sharper) Point is, fuck the NFL and fuck the national sports media. Obviously they don't get us. And obviously they don't deserve what we have. Sinn. Fein. Bitches.



• The Rat Symbolizes Obviousness: I say all this because what we've got here is worth having. I said earlier that I'm not ready to write about the Super Bowl so I won't bore you by telling you what you already know about what last year means. I bring it up only to remind us all that we get to keep all of it. We keep it all no matter what happens this year. The Saints could win 19 games in 2010 or they could win 3. Either way the 2009 New Orleans Saints were World Champions for the first time ever and being there to see that was a transcendental experience and nobody, not even Tedy Brucshi is coming to take that back.
  
  Having said all of that, here are two very obvious reasons I don't think the Saints are going very far into the playoffs this season if at all.
  
  1) Last year the Saints finished 6th overall in rushing in the NFL. Their leading rusher was Pierre Thomas with 793 yards. Second was Mike Bell with 654. Mike Bell is gone. Because Bell didn't see the ball so much in the playoffs, fans tend to forget just how important his contribution to the offense was. Lynell Hamilton was slated to step into Bell's role. Lynell Hamilton is gone. PJ Hill and Chris "Ironbutt" Ivory competed to fill the void left by Hamilton. PJ Hill is gone. Ironbutt is out at least three weeks. The Saints have a massive void in their offense with no apparent answer. I expect them to struggle controlling the ball on the ground all season long. In past seasons, when they've played with a badly unbalanced offense, Drew Brees broke all sorts of passing records but the team didn't win very many games.
  
  2) Even more obvious and boring. The defense has probably not improved very much and won't force as many turnovers. Who is going play where Casillas was supposed to step in for Fujita? Can Malcolm Jenkins do what Darren Sharper did? Is Vilma even healthy? How comfortable do you feel answering any of those questions. In 2009 the a Saints defense with average talent made the most of its multiple fortuitous breaks. Sure it could work that way again. But I don't think so.
  
  So look for the Saints to come back to Earth a bit this year. And the baseline for this group in its non Super Bowl years has been between 7 and 10 wins. They're a plucky lot. Let's give them 9 just because we like them.

Let's hope one of those 9 comes tonight in the Legitimize It bowl against, once more, those hated Vikings. I'm about to head down to the Dome in a few minutes only this time I'm feeling a good deal less wrathful. This doesn't mean I'm not fired up. And even if I wasn't, I've always got Wang around to help me get there. But right now I just want to get to the Dome in time to see that banner drop and to visit for a while with that smell of greatness that nothing can ever wipe away.