Girod Street End Zone

 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.

Following up on my Patriots game theme, these guys were, tossing out the meaningless final game, 10-5 in the regular season.   They only played two playoff teams (went 1-1) and only three winning teams overall (went 2-1).   Their Adjusted Strength of Schedule was .450, essentially the same as the Saints .441…..so we decided to look at who they beat, who beat them, and why.

Here’s the opponent passer rating of the teams they beat in the 10 games they won, and their league rank in that category:

Jacksonville — 96.0 (30)
Houston — 83.2 (14)
Seattle (2x) — 93.4 (28)
St. Louis (2x) — 96.9 (31)
NYGiants — 95.1 (29)
Chicago — 92.3 (26)
Minnesota — 9.25 (27)
Detroit — 107.1 (32)

That’s right:  nine games against the absolute seven worst pass defenses in the league, plus one win against Houston.

Now, let’s look at the five losses:

San Francisco (2x) — 76.2 (9)
Indianapolis — 80.6 (12)
Tennessee — 91.2 (25) (Warner DNP)
Carolina — 71.7 (5)

They played any kind of a half-decent pass defense, chances are they were going down.  Of the 10 games against the eight worst pass D’s in the NFL, they were 9-1.  Playing defenses ranked from 5th to 14th?  1-4, scoring a grand total of five TDs in those four losses.  Warner’s combined passer rating in the four losses he played in?  56.7.

They’ve been getting rich shooting cripples.  Faced with a real secondary, not so much.  Even with the injuries over the back half of the season, we finished third in opponent passer rating at 68.6 for the season, and were either first or second as long as the secondary was healthy with an OPR in the 50′s.

I’ll give you that Warner was spectacular against the Packers last week.  He also had the benefit of a grand plan by Whisenhunt to play the last regular season game, also against the Packers, keeping everything vanilla while running enough sets to see how the Packers would defense them.  In other words, they had the benefit of a complete dress rehearsal.  Not this week, mes amis.

Run, Kurt, run.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 After game two, we gave you more than blind faith.

 Second, thumping the Eagles means something.…..That’s a damn good nine-year run. [The Eagles] are just a tough out, week in, week out. It takes a good team, most likely a real good team, to beat them bad. Not a guarantee of anything. I’m just sayin’.

-o-o-o-o-o-

One Singer, One Song:  ZZ Top, anything they play.  For our final OSOS installment of the year, it just had to be Billy, Dusty and Frank.  When the Top comes on the radio, you know instantly who it is, and that it’s great.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 By October, it should have been obvious.

Having said all that, I will flat predict a win right in the face of the Giants’ strength – the lines….Screw these guys. We make enough plays to get it done. Saints 27, Giants 17.

-o-o-o-o-o-

While the world is expecting a shootout, and it may well be so, is that good?  We’ve taken the position all year that our complementary defense, which fights for turnovers and three and outs and is willing to risk a big play now and then to do so, is critical to our success in that we don’t allow those grinding Touchdown Drives that give each team fewer possessions.  The more possessions, the greater number of chances we have to score, and to get into the kind of rhythm that gets us two or three scores in a row and allows us to pull away.

Can the Cardinals hope to slow the game down?  The magic 8-ball on in our office, and their pattern over the season, say no.  In their 15 meaningful regular season games, not once did their opponent have fewer than 10 possessions (excluding end of half/game kneeldowns), and the average was 12 possessions per game.  We are going to have plenty of chances with the ball.  Get ready to stand up and get crunked.

As an aside, those big plays?  Guess which team had the fewest pass plays of 40+ yards this year?  Correct, the Rams with two.  The Cardinals, with the great Kurt Warner, were next with just three.   Big plays indeed.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 By the eve of the Patriots game, we were demanding that you not deny what was before your eyes.

These guys are what their record says they are:  7-3. ….Give them Belichick-Brady Bonus points, put them at the top of that heap if you want, but don’t tell me I shouldn’t expect us to walk out of there with a solid win on Monday night.

-o-o-o-o-o-

We are now telling you to take one more step and understand that this team is going to Miami.

It’s three the hard way, and the first one is Saturday night.  Ignore the vivid flashiness of what the Cardinals did last weekend, forget what they did last year, and keep their entire season in perspective.   This Saints team is focused and as healthy as it’s been all year, with a far better defense than anyone but we are expecting.  

Sure, anything can happen, we can be a little tight, they can be even more fortunate with the no-calls than they were last weekend, we might slip and give up a big return.  But that’s not the way to bet.   This is a damn good Saints football team that is ready to move forward, and we can’t ask for a much better matchup for a first-round playoff game.  We believe, and win or lose we are going in swinging.

Saints 45, Cardinals 20.

GO SAINTS GO!

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 10:06 am and is filed under The New Orleans Saints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.