Unless you've been living under a rock, or doing whatever it is people do to attain Jackie Clarksonian levels of obliviousness these days, you're no doubt conscious of the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" sit-ins in New York right now. Patrick did some thinking out loud about this scene the other day and despite what sounds a little like a scolding comment from us below that post, we're basically in agreement with his ambivalence. Sure, we're as upset as the next somewhat left of center American about the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of financial and political elites, but as we've seen numerous times, we aren't too keen on the efficacy of gathering large groups of self-important hipppies in the streets for the purposes of combating any of this.
Recently when we attended the disastrous ALEC protest in New Orleans, we concluded
I saw them make a few more rounds chanting the usual worn out protesty mantras about "The people united" and whatnot. As they came by shouting "This is what Democracy looks like" it occurred to me that they were probably right about that. Elites and lawmakers quietly dividing up the wealth of the nation in a hotel suite while clueless douchebags and idiot kids prattle on to no affect in the street is pretty much exactly what American democracy looks like in 2011.
And this is still our impression of what's going on in New York right now. The only improvement being that at least some of the snotty little kids are being pepper sprayed as karmic payment for their quest for celebrity.
Yes, of course, some actual celebrities are showing up now too. (Kudos to Radiohead for saying no, by the way.) And before it's over we're sure someone will write some messages on their hands, or someone will make an awareness calendar or something. But at the end of the day, all of these people will have to go home and realize that they have no alternative but to vote for Obama again and the finance elites will continue to run everything. But hey, it was a great time "doing important things" and all. I'm sure a lot of people got laid. Or failing that, came away with some great networking leads for that next social media marketing thing they're doing next month. Great work, kids.
The one slight advantage the New York protesters have over their copycat me-too marches planned all over the country is at least the Wall Street event is arguably maybe about something. Yglesias, who is like us somewhat sympathetic to the complaint, sounds similarly frustrated with the tactics.
But when the lodestar of your movement is to say, “The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” it’s difficult for me to get excited. You have to have a dream scenario in mind. What if the protests are super-popular, the crowds are enormous, and the inconvenience to the high and mighty becomes intolerable? What if the bad guys decide it’s time to consider a surrender? You want them to come out, address the crowd, and do what?Our point is a bit harsher than his in that we don't think any of the people you see on TV actually care about making anything specific happen beyond calling attention to themselves. But, on the off chance that we can salvage something worthwhile from our own local "occupation" event let us offer up a suggested target. Why not Occupy Poydras Street?
Let's make make the Occupy New Orleans event a real assertion of the people's rights in the face of neo-feudal elite usurpers by marching on and "occupying" the site of that elite's most egregious presumption of ownership. Let's demand that Tom and Rita Benson acknowledge that the Louisiana Superdome belongs not to them, not to the National Football Cartel they hold membership in, but to the citizens of the State of Louisiana who paid to construct and maintain that facility out of their tax revenues. Let's remind the Bensons that it is our good name and iconography on which the lucrative brand "New Orleans Saints" that the Bensons derive such wealth from is built.
You want specific demands? Fine, here they are. We demand that the Bensons immediately cease efforts to cheapen our building, our "Sacredome" by appending the name of some base commercial sponsor to its title. We've been more than reasonable with the Bensons and the NFL. We've allowed them to profit handsomely while using our building and enjoying our subsidies and trademarking our name and symbols. At least spare us the indignity of having a corporate partner of theirs pretend to some ownership of our property as well.
Other sports owners are oblivious to the bounty they've been granted by the people at large. Tell the Bensons not to be like them. Tell them that NFL bylaws are not necessarily the law of the land. Were we to one day muster the political will, we could still follow a successful alternate model that more accurately reflects the public's entitlement via-a-vis its investment in its sports franchises.
It may be exorbitantly expensive to run a team, but people don’t buy N.F.L. teams as a civic service. Being an N.F.L. owner is like having a license to print money. Television contracts alone run in the billions, with the 2006-2011 contracts valued at approximately $3 billion annually, $800 million more than the previous contracts. In addition, N.F.L. teams have received $6 billion in public funds to build the current crop of stadiums. In other words, the public is already shouldering a great deal of the cost and debt for N.F.L. franchises. But these public dollars, through some sort of magic alchemy, morph into private profits that often flow away from the communities that ponied up the dough. In the United States, we socialize the debt of sports and privatize the profits. Green Bay stands as a living, breathing, and, for the owners, frightening example, that pro sports can aid our cities in tough economic times, not drain them of scarce public resources.
But we're not marching to overturn the Bensons' stolen applecart. We could do that but we're reasonable people. We just want to be treated with respect when we show up at our building to watch our football team play. Part of that means not selling off our name but it also means keeping your damn dirty hands off of us.
Instead of the torso-only pat-downs and bag checks that have been in place for several years, ticket holders will be patted down from the ankle up before Sunday's duel between the Saints and the Chicago Bears.
The National Football League demanded the expanded screenings in the wake of an incident last week at a game in New Jersey between the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys, where a spectator sneaked in a stun gun.
The more skeptical among us aren't so sure this is about safety. More likely it's about maximizing owners' concession profits.
The new searches may unintentionally disrupt a longtime tradition for some Saints fans, including Joseph, who totes a small flask to every game to avoid paying $9 for a single drink and $14 for a double, he said.
Freeman conceded that guards might "catch a few more things." And, as always, he said, anyone nabbed with a flask, or any other beverages, will be asked to consume it or pour it out before entering the Dome.
Those $9.00 beer profits, by the way, go directly to Benson. The taxpayers don't even realize any benefit from sticking it to themselves on drink prices. Ourselves, we have been flask carriers ever since 2006 when we thought $9.00 was an outrageous amount to pay for the Dome double Bloody Marys. Surely we're not ready to back down in the face of near 50% inflation over 5 years.
Anyway we're happy to report that we made it past the Stasi with little difficulty these first two weeks. Also we had one of these with us which certainly looks threatening in and of itself but caused little distress with security.
It turns out that a small metal flask is still a pretty decent piece of spy technology. It's curved so it hugs the hip in a nearly undetectable fashion. Nearly undetectable.
The National Football League is pushing for enhanced security, and starting with Sunday's game at Lambeau, all fans will be subject to a hand-held, metal-detecting wand test before being admitted.
The procedure would be similar to wand inspections at the airport, but this process would be less invasive than the full-body exam, said Doug Collins, Packers director of security.
See even in Green Bay they're getting ridiculous with this stuff. Worse, in Cleveland last weekend, fans were ejected from their taxpayer subsidized stadium for standing. For fucking standing!
At least if they're going to poke and prod and otherwise insult us the way they do, they could try to do it more quickly. When the Saints kicked off against Houston, our section of the Dome was still a good 2/3 empty due to the long lines at the gate. We're not sure we reached full capacity until a few minutes into the second half. Maltreatment of citizens by private lords presuming to reign over the public space has gone too far. Please join us Sunday as we tell these Occupy NOLA people they need to do something about... oh okay we'll probably just be watching the Saints and Jaguars Sunday afternoon but you get the idea.
Anywhoo... this is a football re-cap, right?
Two Weeks of Saints Football:
- This week's RTA complaint: Ever since we became a one bicycle household, we've found ourselves relying on the streetcar service to get us
tonear the Dome on game days. Our results have been fair at best in the past and recently have only gotten worse. Streetcar service on Sundays has always been iffy but if there's an event like a football game going on it's just deplorable. If you're not at a stop by 10:45 at the latest, odds are you're not going to be in your seats in time for kickoff. Often even that is no good as we have quite a few times found ourselves giving up and walking all or most of the way downtown. Last week we stood at the stop and watched 5 streetcars roll by headed the wrong direction one right after the other as if they were a parade or perhaps a slightly interrupted train. Luckily this one time we happened to be rescued by passing Good Samaritans offering a ride. Otherwise, given the security lines we faced once we arrived, we might never have made it inside that day. - Just get Drew's contract done already.
It's pretty obvious that Drew Brees is as responsible for what happens with the Saints' offense as Sean Payton is. The Houston game couldn't have illustrated his value more clearly.Trailing 26-17 early in the fourth quarter, Payton made a brilliant strategic move. He abandoned the regular offense and went almost exclusively to a hurry-up offense that relied on Brees to call the plays at the line of scrimmage based on pre-snap reads.
Conjuring up his Purdue University days, Brees operated out of the shotgun and spread formation. The Saints' used the same five skill-position players in their Posse personnel group: receivers Devery Henderson, Robert Meachem and Lance Moore; tight end Jimmy Graham; and running back Darren Sproles, who was aligned as a slot receiver more often than not.
When we saw the Saints go to this offense after having been frustrated for much of the day, we said they looked like they were "out of ideas." We've changed our mind a little bit about that and we'll try to explain here.
It had been a long day of, yet again, not understanding why the Saints refused to stick with a running game that appeared to be producing results. We've also been watching a lot of LSU football this year which (at least while Jordan Jefferson has been out) has demonstrated the value of just lining up and beating people by doing what works. In an era where every college defense is built to defend the spread, LSU runs the ball right at people and just keeps doing it. Basically they've confused the competition by taking football back to 1983 and are killing people with that. Maybe someone will figure it out eventually but the key thing to remember there is, until someone does, don't stop doing it.
Several times during the Texans game, the Saints followed up consecutive positive running plays by suddenly jumping back into their spread formation on first and 10. We know Payton wants to show off all of the nifty toys in the Saints' offense but we get frustrated whenever football coaches abandon something that's working because they want to show us something neat.
When the Saints turned the keys over to Drew in the fourth quarter, we saw them line up in the shotgun and thought they might be just giving up. But looking back at how Drew ran the offense we've come to feel differently about this. See this week's JJ award section below for more on this but what Drew did here was find a play that works and stick with that until the Texans either stopped it or were crushed by it. That's winning football. It just got done through the air instead of on the ground this time.
It's almost enough to make us hope the Saints find themselves in desperate enough positions to keep letting Drew call the plays all season. It limits the damage Sean Payton can do to people's grandmas. So let's drop all this pretense and recognize that Brees is worth being paid in the same class as the quarterbacks he's being compared to at the negotiating table. And do it soon before Saints fans lower themselves to putting up their own billboard. - Jimmy Graham is not entirely off the hook here: We know everybody likes him but the dude nearly got the Saints beat all by himself vs Houston despite his key role in the comeback. It almost makes us want to do a "Good Jimmy Graham/Bad Jimmy Graham" segment here. It's definitely a pattern to watch for anyway. In the Texans game, Graham dropped 3 passes, was responsible for a sack in pass protection, and ran the wrong route on a play resulting in Brees' second interception of the game. (Brees' first interception we took as granted just as a result of the fact that he was, after all, dressed like Billy Kilmer that day.)
Although maybe a bit less red in the face.
Of course Graham also helped dig the Saints out of the hole he contributed much to the digging of by making some big catches down the stretch including the touchdown that brought the Saints to within 2 points of the lead in the fourth quarter. If he ever gets his head on straight he might not be half bad.
Graham also has the bizarre habit of beating himself about the head after successful plays. He should probably stop that - 2 weeks of It's Been Fun Indexes:
Week 2
Darren Sproles vs Bears: 4 carries for 17 yards, 8 receptions 43 yards and a touchdown, 2 punt returns 1 yard, 1 kickoff return 24 yards. TOTAL: 85 yards and a TD
Reggie Bush vs Texans: 6 carries 18 yards, 1 reception 3 yards TOTAL: 21 yardsWeek 3
Darren Sproles vs Texans: 2 carries 35 yards and a touchdown, 6 receptions 50 yards, 4 kickoff returns 103 yards, 1 punt return 5 yards TOTAL: 193 yards and a TD
Reggie Bush vs Browns: 11 carries 24 yards, 1 reception 12 yards, 1 punt return 12 yards, 2 fumbles. TOTAL: 48 yards and two fumbles.
On the year now that's 528 all-purpose yards and 3 touchdowns for Sproles vs 163 all-purpose yards and 2 fumbles for Bush.
Reggie also made news this week by claiming that during his time with the Saints, Sean Payton would regularly plan to have players fake injuries in order to slow down opposing offenses if need be. Reggie does know a lot about being injured as well as phony things in general, but Payton says he's full of shit.
Also of note, this past week's halftime entertainment at the Superdome featured about ten minutes of scrimmaging between local pee wee football teams which, from our viewpoint, looked like a whole football field full of Darren Sproleses which is just indescribably awesome.
Also, too, we've been alerted to this downtown real estate listing. Can be had for about $2.3 million. But there may be a discount involved to cover the difficulties of getting the Kardashian out of the rug. - 2 weeks of Diners, Drive-ins and Diving to the Ground Index:
Panthers tight end Jeremy Shockey vs Jacksonville: 3 receptions 30 yards.
Shockey vs Green Bay: 3 receptions 56 yards.
Shockey now has a total of 9 catches for 137 yards on the season which is actually pretty respectable given that he's the Panthers' second tight end behind Greg Olsen (12 receptions 169 yards and 1 TD). If we wanted to we could compare Shockey's numbers with Jimmy Graham's (14 receptions 235 yards 2 TDs) and find Graham, for all his faults (see above), has been more productive.
But the number we're actually concerned with is Shockey's touchdowns total compared against the number scored by whatever Saints backup tackle is lining up as the "eligible receiver" in short yardage situations. On the Saints' side of this equation, events have unfolded quite differently than how we had anticipated when we first developed this concept.
First, the Saints released tackle Jon Stinchcomb and promoted longtime Tackle Eligible Zach Strief to the starter's role. With Strief in the starting line up, we expected to see Charles Brown move into the eligible slot which was an intriguing thought given that most observers agree Brown is at least athletic enough to play left tackle and may actually prove more of a reliable receiver than Strief if ever given the opportunity.
But now Strief is down for... well since this is a Saints injury report... nobody knows how long making Brown the new starting right tackle. Will the Saints ever find a way to work the Tackle Eligible formation back into their game plan? We're holding out a glimmer of hope for this since tight end David Thomas' questionable status may necessitate throwing an extra lineman in the mix somewhere but we'll admit it does seem a bit of a long shot.
Anyway despite all the upheaval the index still amusingly stands at
Jeremey Shockey: 0 Touchdowns to Various Saints tackles: 0 Touchdowns - 2 weeks of Jordan Jefferson Try Not To Kick Anybody In The Face Awards: For Week 2 this goes to Roman Harper who was errantly penalized for "roughing" Chicago's Jay Cutler. Later during the week, league officials publicly stated that Harper shouldn't have been penalized but the damage was already done by that point. The penalty rescued the Bears from a failed 3rd and 6 setting them up to score what would be their only touchdown of the day. On the other hand the penalty didn't do much to discourage the Saints from continuing to pummel Cutler as they went on to sack him 6 times and land numerous other blows more vicious than the one Harper was penalized for.
Week 3's award goes to Houston's Kareem Jackson who amazingly was not flagged for spearing a defenseless Drew Brees in the earhole with the crown of his helmet. Brees managed to keep it together and bring the Saints back for what I am told was a "special season-defining victory." Part of how he did that was by throwing the ball to Lance Moore a whole lot during the second half. WWLTV reported from the sideline that Moore was particularly fired up by Jackson's late hit on Brees and directed a steady stream of trash talk at Jackson throughout the rest of the game. Also Moore pretty much torched the Texans' defense all by himself. Here's the play by play of the fourth quarter drive where the Saints took the lead after Houston badly shanked a punt.1st&10 Hou 47 Drew Brees pass to the right to Robert Meachem for 11 yards to the Hou 36. Tackled by Johnathan Joseph.
1st&10 Hou 36 Drew Brees pass to the left to Lance Moore for 8 yards to the Hou 28. Tackled by Kareem Jackson.
2nd&2 Hou28 Drew Brees pass to the left to Lance Moore for 8 yards to the Hou 20. Tackled by Kareem Jackson.
1st&10 Hou20 Drew Brees pass to the left to Lance Moore for 4 yards to the Hou 16. Tackled by Troy Nolan.
2nd&6 Hou 16 Drew Brees incomplete pass to the left intended for Darren Sproles.
3rd&6 Hou 16 Drew Brees pass to the middle to Lance Moore for 16 yards for a TOUCHDOWN.
Drew Brees 2 pt conversion pass to Lance Moore is GOOD.
Pretty much all Brees to Moore with Jackson covering him. Moore had Jackson badly turned around on the touchdown as well. Oh yeah, and the 2 for good measure. Oh and another Brees to Moore 2 pointer later running the exact same play. Basically the entire second half of this game can be seen as one big fuck you from Lance Moore.
"THANKS HOUSTON" Also don't piss this guy off - Last week's winner of an award we had no idea existed
Something called a Morton's The Steakhouse Community Player of the Week Award went to Thomas Morstead apparently because he goes to hospitals and does nice things for people and stuff. Or maybe it has something to do with his grooming. Either way we were more impressed with the way Morstead neutralized Chicago's Devin Hester with a mix of well-placed directional punting and a few big booming boots including an impressive 59 yard blast from out of his own end zone. Between Morstead and LSU's Brad Wing, Louisiana may well be the world epicenter of punting excellence this year.
- Devery's Time: This is Devery's year. Not that we've had much tolerance for this sort of thing in the past but we are no longer entertaining any anti-Devery propaganda on this particular internet. Please take your whining elsewhere. We are getting one of those "Our Time" T-Shirts the Saints have been using re-worked into a "Devery's Time" shirt. Menckles just ordered a Devery jersey this week. We are going all in on this thing over here.
Against Chicago Devery only caught 3 passes one of which happened to be the 79 yard touchdown that more or less ended the Bears' day early in the second quarter. Against Houston, he caught another 3 passes including a 44 yarder that ended up as the Saints' longest completion of the day. Devery doesn't kill you all day the way Lance Moore does when you piss him off, or the way Marques Colston does whenever he emerges from his hyperbaric chamber. Devery kills you one time in any one game. But he kills you real good when he does.
When all else fails, get the ball in your Tiger's hands - Garrett Hartley: Whatever. Don't care. Moving on.
- Horrifying signage spotted just near the Dome on gameday:
- Odd Fact Robert Meachem has scored a touchdown in every game so far despite not seeming all that involved.
Meach has gotten so little attention that you can smack him on the head like this and, as far as the referee is concerned, nothing happened - Odd Observation: These two games were our first opportunity to watch Mark Ingram run in person and we like what we see so far. We don't think he's quite settled down yet and, to put it in a way someone pretending to know what he's talking about might, he looks like his timing isn't right yet. But he's getting there and we're happy to report that he looks faster than we were expecting.
Anyway we noticed there was something distinctive about his energetic, quick stepping, fist pumping running style that reminded us of something we'd seen before and after careful study of the game film, we've decided that what we've seen before is Dig Dug. Here's that game film we studied.
You can kind of see it, right? Short choppy steps, ability to make his own holes, maybe someday soon he'll start blowing up his opponents with more regularity. We're feeling pretty good about it.
So the Saints are sitting nicely at 2-1 with a presumably easy stretch of schedule sitting ahead of them. Now please don't mistake what we are about to say because we are certainly all #iamnotworried and everything but there's something still bothering us about the fact that we're only just past Week 3 and the Saints are already struggling through some pretty significant injuries.
Something we said in passing at the end of last season was that we've begun to wonder if the Saints should invest in a new training and conditioning staff. In each of the past few years (even during 2009) they've appeared to fade down the stretch at the end of the regular season. Injuries mount up and the whole team takes on a sort of tired aspect. Maybe it was just us but we thought we were seeing some of that listlessness even as the Saints were fighting through it during the Houston game. We hope we're wrong about that but... well it's just something to watch.
Of course it could just be us. You see the Dome is doing two new things this year that contributed to our discomfort. For one they're selling lemonade in our nearby concession area now which means we had to share the contents of our flask with Menckles who, as it turns out, really likes lemonade. Also they're selling an $11.00 "bottomless" soda which makes a hell of a lot of sense if you're planning to mix cocktails but only if you've got enough alcohol to go around. We didn't have quite enough but we certainly were going to get our 11 bucks worth of Diet Coke anyway. And so during the "special season-defining" comeback everyone keeps talking about, we were not only not quite drunk enough to appreciate the full import of what was happening but we also really really had to pee.
So again, in some small way, this is still all Tom Benson's fault for arranging the concessions the way he has. I hope the protest marchers remember that.
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