The Report, never a doubt edition
Claude Coupee
Lead Correspondent
The thing that you can feel right now….is the sense of redemption, for anyone who has ever been a Saint, coached the Saints, followed the Saints….worn the bags on their heads. It is gone, it is all gone, as of this moment.
–Tom Jackson
ESPN
February 7, 2010
So it’s nigh on a month, and we’re still feeling mighty high.
High like “we started 13-0″ high. I know that the post-season and free agency are already upon us, but I’m not leaving 2009 without a final turn through the joy. So let’s have some more fun with the numbers.
Seven teams in NFL history started a season 13-0. Only three of them, the 1972 Dolphins (14-0), the 1998 Broncos (14-2) and the 2009 Saints (13-3) won the Super Bowl the same year.
We also knocked off a couple of statistical anomalies: no team had ever lost its last three regular season games and won the Super Bowl, and no team had ever lost to the Bucs in a regular season and won the Super Bowl that year.
It was reasonably well noted that we had an 8-1 turnover advantage in the playoffs, and even our single turnover came not on offense, but on special teams.
However, some other real amazing stuff that got lost in the shuffle, such as the Saints outscoring their three playoff opponents 52-21 in the second halves (plus an overtime) of three playoff games, and giving up only seven points in three post-season fourth quarters, and all this against three teams that were ranked second (Minny), seventh (Indy) and 11th (Arizona) in scoring in the regular season. This is the kind of defensive show you post against bad teams, not good ones. A dominating performance from a decidedly unexpected source….unless you were watching the Saints all year. People should have been kissing our defense’s butt for an entire week afterwards, but I guess we were too happy to care.
Finally, even I don’t have the time for this kind of research, but I wonder how common it is for a team to fall behind by at least a touchdown in all three of its post-season games, and win them all, including the Super Bowl, in the process.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Got to thinking the other day, 43 years is a long time, a long time with a lot of dry spells in between. Was it worth it? Worth the wait? We turn to another iconic use of football in popular culture for the answer:
Paul Crewe: Hey Pop, the time you hit Hazen in the mouth, was it worth 30 years?
Pop: For me it was.
Paul Crewe: Then give me my damn shoe!
I guess, for a lot of us, there was maybe a time when you thought maybe it wasn’t worth it. Maybe you could just walk away and put it all in the past. But then you’d have to live with yourself, so instead, just like Pop, you turned around and hit Hazen in the mouth.
It cost you years and years of watching Jerry Rice prance around and celebrate, and all sorts of Dirty Bird dances, and Jake Delhomme whining at referees, but you could never turn back, even though it cost you years and years and years. It was like prison. You couldn’t get out. You just had to do your time.
And it was worth it. Every goddamn, cotton-picking minute.
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Interesting post-season stat line for PK Garrett Hartley caught my eye:
10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50+
FGM/FGA 0/0 0/0 0/0 5/5 0/0
Dude was a stone killer out there. He was meant to be there. Hartley’s going to be a monster for the next 10 years, we are talking Vinatieri territory here.
I think Rich Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News is as good an NFL correspondent as there is, and has been for a long time. He does a great job of looking at the right stats. Oddly, his special teams rankings had us at only 29th in the entire league, and you can see the link here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/stories/021410dnspospecialteams.3df2052.html
This will bear watching next year. All I know is, I’m not trading Hartley, Thomas Morstead and Courtney Roby for any comparable trio in the league.
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Something else about our under-praised defense. We could easily have lost either the NFCCG or the Super Bowl, more likely the former, when Minnesota had a first down on our 33 yard line with two minutes to play, just on the cusp of field goal range. I will go to my grave not knowing how in ever loving hell a defense that had been largely trampled for 58 minutes stoned the Vikings for no gain on two consecutive running plays.
You know the rest, the bungled time out and huddle, the Porter interception, the big finish. And I can’t help but think back and suspect that if Minnesota had just gotten a couple of yards on each of those runs, history’s awful different right now. For the rest of my life, when I think about this season, it’s going to be hard not to think about those two stops.
Hell, stuffing the Colts third-and-1 near the end of the half in the Super Bowl is almost an afterthought in comparison, but it’s arguably the hinge-point of that game as well.
The essence of a champion: making the plays when you have to.
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We’ll close today with one more homage to Drew Brees. 32 of 39, 29 of his last 32 (with a drop and a spike), his last 10 in a row, including eight passes to eight different receivers in a game-winning fourth quarter TD drive plus conversion. It’s nice that he’s getting praise, but people are gushing about what a nice boy he is, and meanwhile we are talking Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas territory here, taking a bunch of skill position players who have never even sniffed the Pro Bowl and dragging them into immortality. He just cut the Colts hearts out. This isn’t Ben Roethlisberger shucking and jiving all game and making one big throw in the back of the end zone. This is trading punches with one of the greatest of all time and it’s close, it’s close, it’s close, and all of a sudden you’re pummeling him in the 14th round and they stop the fight and give you the TKO, Thizz–fight–izz–ovah style.
It’s nice that Brees gets the love. I have no problem with the quantity. It’s the quality: this was one of the most clutch post-season quarterbacking jobs in NFL history. Other than Steve Young, now the best football commentator in TV, hands down, and a man I loathe myself for admiring so much, no one has pointed out what greatness, what a singular performance we saw last month, and somebody is going to pay.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Later this week, The Goat and I will start taking you into the offseason, with perhaps yet one more look back at how this team stacks up with other SB champs of the last 30 years or so; you need some distance for that kind of work. Until then, console yourselves with replays.
WHO DAT.
March 9th, 2010 at 9:52 am
I agree about Drew’s performance. Especially that last drive, which I’m convinced would have gone down as one of the all-time greats a la “The Drive” if only it had come a little later in the game, and/or Porter hadn’t made the INT and turned it into a 2-score final margin. As it turned out, that drive is going to end up largely relegated to footnote status, which is a shame, because it might very well be THE single greatest single-drive performance by a QB in Super Bowl history.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:19 am
I think Dilfer outshines Young in television football commentary, but agree with just about everything else you have to say.
March 9th, 2010 at 11:49 am
That’s pretty amazing on Hartley. Enjoyed the read and look forward to the offseason stuff.