Falcon Week Fail

I had a long post planned out in my head about last week's game where I started by talking about our surprise bus ride to the Superdome due to construction on the streetcar route and ended it by talking about our bus ride home when the lady sitting next to us told us her nephew had just been murdered. And then there was this framing device where I would introduce the whole thing by talking about the Atlanta and New Orleans fans' tradition of chartering buses between the two cities for these football games. It was all very clever and a little sad (because it's true!) But I've been busy all week and today I got caught up watching Les Miles being stupid and then we went out to Gretna Fest and then.. well I just never got it all done.

So instead here are the quick and dirty notes from last week without the usual stolen T-P photos and funny captions and stuff. We're getting 2010 off to a slow start at the Yellow Blog. But then so are the Saints so we don't feel that bad.

• First Possession Juggernaut For the third week in a row the Saints scored on their first possession of the game and then became less and less productive as the day progressed. Don't know if this means anything.



• No Reggie, no problem Like we said last week, the Saints have plenty of guys who can line up in the slot and out-quick whatever linebacker or safety is mismatched in coverage. It's one advantage of Payton's spread offense. This week, that person was Lance Moore (6 receptions 149 yards and 2 touchdowns)Moore also returned a punt 74 yards just to drive the point home. The disadvantage is none of these people can run the ball very well, but Bush doesn't do that either.



• Sometimes the best defense is a non-crazy offense I know the Saints are 31st in run defense and that fans are focusing on that. But the reasons for that number go beyond just the personnel on the defensive front seven. If anything the Saints' defensive front is doing a better job of holding its own physically than it did last season. For much of the first half, in fact, they appeared to us casual observers in the stands, to be whipping the Falcons' O-line on most downs. Atlanta wasn't opening big holes in the run game. On passing plays, defensive tackles were getting in Matt Ryan's face a lot. In the second half this changed as the Saints started to wear down a bit and that's a problem but there are reasons for it.
  
  First of all, the Saints could not get off the field on third (and a couple of times on fourth) down. Usually this was directly related to their failing or neglecting to cover Tony Gonzales. There were times when Gonzales' dominance was just comical. Moments before his first quarter touchdown, I actually did this thing. I leaned over to Menckles and said, "See where number 88 is lined up here? That's where they're gonna throw the ball." I know. Genius.
  
  But most of all the reason the Saints defense had to defend so many plays last week was the Saints' offense couldn't keep the ball away from them. The Saints attempted 38 passes and 16 rushes. We thought that Sean Payton had learned by now that you can't win in the NFL with that kind of play distribution. You can win some of the time if your quarterback is Drew Brees and can complete 70-80% of those passes. But if you have him throw enough, sooner or later he's going to complete a few to the other team. And taking it back isn't always as easy as it is against San Francisco.
  
  I know the Saints' backfield right now is three guys nobody knows with about four good legs among them all. But if you're putting somebody out there, you're gonna have to give him the ball. Not including quarterback scrambles, the Falcons ran the ball 19 times in the first half. That's three more attempts than the Saints made the entire game. The problem isn't so much that the Falcons controlled the game on the ground. It's that the Saints didn't even bother to try. As of this week, the Saints are ranked dead last in the NFL in rushing. Mostly by choice.



• Other things Sean Payton did wrong This was one of the worst games Sean Payton has ever coached (and I've agitated for his removal in the past so I know what I'm talking about) The game plan was ridiculous (see above). The clock management was horrendous at the end of the first half. And there were two moments we can identify where one could argue that Payton lost the game.
  
  The first of these came on the Saints' first possession of the second half. Facing a third and fifteen, Brees hits Pierre Thomas who appears to have the necessary yardage for a first down but for a poor spot which Payton neglects to challenge. The Saints are still in makeable field goal range but Payton decides to go for a Fourth and inches despite the opportunity to take the lead and control of the game by kicking. The gamble fails. The Falcons take the lead with their next possession.
  
  Later, as Matt Bryant attempted to kick the field goal that beat the Saints in overtime, Sean Payton pulled the dickest move in football. He called a timeout at the last possible second just as the ball was being snapped. The psych-out strategy behind this dick move is to make the opposing kicker, the players on both teams, and everyone in the stands and watching on TV look at what they think for a moment is the most important play of the game only to learn seconds later that it didn't count and everybody has to do it all over again. No one should be allowed this option. It doesn't have anything to do with actual game play, it annoys the fuck out of everyone else involved, and according to these numbers, it doesn't even work most of the time. It's just pure dickery. And, as we have seen time and again, football coaches are among Earth's lower animals. Given the opportunity to behave like superb dicks, they will happily do so. The rules should not allow this kind of unsportsmanlike conduct.
  
  The bad news is the rules do allow it. The good news, if you can call it that, is that the dick move blew up in Payton's dick face. The play he dickishly nullified with his stupid pointless dick timeout would have resulted in a blocked kick. Everyone saw that play out plain as day. But the Payton was being all strategic and stuff so Bryant got a do over. Sean Payton is a dick.



• Pants factor: Oh yes, the damn pants factor is back and it is serious. Despite the overwhelming evidence warning them against such a decision, the Saints wore their ugly black pants on Sunday with predictable results. Here are the latest numbers on this travesty going in to last week's game. Can't somebody make this stop?



• Falcons fans know how to bounce: I've always loved Falcon week. Atlanta is the Saints' biggest traditional rival but, as I've said in the past, the Saints and Falcons fans have a sort of sibling rivalry. We hate losing to them, we talk a lot of shit with them while they're here, but we have more genuine fun with them than with any other team's fan base. Visiting Falcons fans rib us in the stands near our seats in the Superdome but they do so with a sense of humor and fun. They even dance with us. On Sunday, the Falcons fans in our section were dancing to Stand up and Get Crunk with us after Saints' touchdowns. Falcon week is fun. It still sucks to lose to them, though.



• Bob Breck's Giant Head: If you don't go to the games, you may not know that each week just after halftime, Fox 8 weatherman Bob Breck appears briefly on the jumbotron to update fans on the forecast and to scream at them like some giant ape dangling from the top of a skyscraper. Breck's energy level is, predictably over-the-top. Usually when he addresses the crowd from the heavens, there are "No tropical storms or hurricanes in the Gulf!" and he makes certain to scream this non-information at us. Then he'll ad-lib a few nondescript but high-energy exhortations of the team and encourage us to get all pumped up and stuff. I admit, part of me would like to see the Saints losing by forty or fifty points just once when it's time for Breck to get up and scream just to see the reaction. Anyway, this week Breck was wearing eyeblack on his face.... over his eyebrows. I thought this was weird, although it's not much weirder than the rest of his act up there.



• Morstead is the Saints' go-to guy in the clutch: For the second week in a row, Thomas Morstead generated the Saints' biggest offensive gain of the second half when a ball he punted bounced off the foot of Atlanta's Thomas MacLeod before being recovered by Jason Kyle. The drive Morstead preserved resulted in a Lance Moore touchdown. How many times can Morstead bail this team out?



• Just saying this one thing: Near the end of regulation, on the play where Brees hung in the pocket long enough to get himself hurt and just miss Lance Moore for what could have been the winning touchdown, Marques Colston was wide open in the endzone and nobody saw him.



• In addition to the pants: Just as the game went into overtime, the girls splashed me with something called "Ooh La Lavender" for what they said was good luck. We won't be doing that again.




• Uh oh the kicker sucks: I don't even have the energy to re-hash this at this point in the post. Everything Wang said earlier in the week stands for me. I said last week, I don't trust Garrett Hartley. I never have. I don't see any reason for the Saints to keep waiting for him to keep failing. Maybe he'll fuck up more against the Panthers so we can talk about it some more. But right now my position is, he had an opportunity to win the game and he blew it. If you want to make excuses or give me reasons why you think he isn't to blame for that, I can only conclude that there is something wrong with you.

Maybe we'll do a better job of getting this post out next week. Maybe the Saints will do a better job. But right now I'm tired. And there's an early game tomorrow.