Girod Street End Zone

Claude Coupee
Lead Correspondent

I am a man at peace.   There is a stir of anticipation, but no tension.   Most importantly, no fear.

I urge you to join me in blocking out the noise, the distractions, the things that take you away from your center.  You can achieve this by joining me in a somewhat complex but perfect series of phrases comprising the mantra, set forth at various points below.

First, the Saints have been the better team all year when it counts.

The Saints were 13-2, the Vikings 11-4.  (Note:  We have omitted all week 17 data from the analysis wherever feasible.)  Under Adjusted Strength of Schedule, the Saints opponents were .438, the Vikings opponents were .415.

Against playoff teams?  The Saints were 3-1, +54 net points, the Vikings 4-1, +28 net points.

Against teams with winning records?  The Saints were 5-1, +65, the Vikings  4-2, +18.

Against half-decent teams with a some legitimate shot to compete with you straight up? (We cut this off at teams with 6+ wins.)  Saints 9-1, +117, Vikings 6-4, +20.

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The Goat
GSEZ Founder

We can’t possibly lose this game.  We can beat them to death with movies.   There has only been one movie ever worth watching made with any reference to Minnesota whatsoever.  New Orleans, on the other hand……

1.  The Big Easy versus The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid
One, an iconic if ham-fisted 2-1/2 star detective potboiler, spoiled only for the locals by a Dennis Quaid “Cajun accent” so bad they should have just gone for realism and cast Jackie Chan instead.  The other, an obscure revisionist Western from the ’70s that is not so much obscure as that no one, even star Cliff Robertson, ever cared.

2.  A Streetcar Named Desire versus Feeling Minnesota
One, an iconic movie production of the apex of Tennessee Williams’ work, launching star Marlon Brando into the stratosphere forever, the other an obscure revisionist released-con film that is not so much obscure as that no one, even star Keanu Reeves (cameo by Dan Aykroyd as a lawman), ever cared.

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 Claude Coupee
Lead Correspondent

 In early September, we tried to tell you.

So I am at 12-4. I am not guessing, I am stone cold that this is the right number, and if I had to bet at this line, I would take the over.

 -o-o-o-o-o-

It’s no secret that I’ve never been a Kurt Warner fan.  To steal from the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan (Ryan was talking about Phil Jackson as an NBA coach), Warner is the Forrest Gump of NFL quarterbacks:  when he can throw to an all-star cast of pass-catchers that was already there when he got there (Torry Holt, Isaac Bruce, Marshall Faulk, Larry Fitzgerald, Anquin Boldin) under a head coach who is in the top rank of offensive minds (Mike Martz, Ken Whisenhunt), he’s great.  Otherwise, he’s a poor-man’s Brett Favre chucker who will turn the ball over pretty regularly rather than check his game down and manage the situation.

And I am not saying it’s fake piety, but I have also always believed that he is an absolute attention whore, posing for the interview instead of really connecting with the audience.

Who are these Cardinals?  Are they to be feared?  Forget meaningless statistical anomalies and outliers tossed out by the media (Dallas hasn’t won a playoff game in 13 years, teams winning wild card games in OT are 0-4 the following week, blah, blah, blah).   The wrong statistics lie.  The ones I point you to…..do not.

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The Goat
GSEZ Founder

Wasn’t that a nice weekend?  Sitting in the warm butter of the playoffs, watching eight other teams knock the s*** out of each other in a desperate battle for survival while we calmly file our nails, Bugs Bunny style, waiting for all the folderol to die down?

-o-o-o-o-o-

I don’t really give a damn about recent results for bye-week teams, that the no. 1 or no. 2 seed is hardly a pre-punched ticket to the championship game of your respective conference. 

What were we supposed to do, look at the recent NFL actuarial tables and toss a couple of games in October in exchange for a guaranteed stretch run?  Not how it works, dollface.

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Claude Coupee
Lead Correspondent

So, where’s the mojo?   Oh where, oh where can it be?

Cutting directly to the chase, it would take a pretty strong case of willful denial to assert that the Saints didn’t leave something back on the field when they trotted off the Superdome floor to roaring cheers after the 38-17 Monday night beatdown of the Patriots moved them to 11-0.

The real question is, where did the mojo go, and why, can they get it back in time for the NFC Divisional Round?   Let us address some theories from the classical Greek legends:

Pheidippides – As legend has it, after the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, Pheidippides was sent to run the 26 miles to Athens to tell news of the battle won, and, having arrived and given the new, he died of exhaustion.

Under the Pheidippides theory, the team burned itself out too soon, going in a dead sprint in search of a perfect game every week and trying to destroy everything its path.  One can argue that the more measured one-week-at-a-time approach (the Rudolph Hess Method) geared towards a strong December and January, perfected by more established regimes such as those in New England, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, the Giants and, to some extent, Indianapolis, is the way to go, and that these more experienced   organizations have already learned the lesson now being taught on Airline Drive for the first time ever.

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