Girod Street End Zone

Claude Coupee
Lead Correspondent

Confirmation bias n. The tendency to favor information that confirms one’s preconceived notions or hypotheses, without regard to the veracity, quality or value of the factual information.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Saints fans, I give you the 2010 Atlanta Falcons, ranked 7th in the NFL by Rick Gosselin in his pre-season (i.e. “early prediction”) rankings (he has the Saints 8th) and an incredible 5th in league by John Clayton (he has the Saints seventh).

Not to mention Mike and Mike know that Atlanta will win the NFC South this year.  Maybe I should just wait for the 2011 NBA playoffs.

There are two elements at play here.  First, you know that commentators want to contrast themselves with the crowd by picking new teams to step up, which is fine;  to some extent, they’re in the entertainment business, and in the absence of substance, novelty can be a workable substitute.

However, we think that a more powerful force is that a lot of these national guys, who have to look at 32 teams closely, suffer from confirmation bias — they expected the Falcons, darlings of 2008, to be among the league’s contenders in 2009.  The ESPN pre-season poll rankings (votes of four different national ESPN writers who cover the NFL) in 2009 had the Falcons 8th:  ”With a healthy line, this offense should know no bounds with Tony Gonzalez joining Matt Ryan, Michael Turner and Co.”   When that didn’t work out so well for the playoff-watching Falcons, well, it must have been something else, because these guys couldn’t have been wrong, could they?  Surely the Falcons failures last year were just a little hiccup, and they’re right back on track this year?

Let’s just say we don’t think so.  The Falcons slid back towards the mean last year, and deservedly so.  The excuses proferred by their apologists just don’t carry any water.

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Let’s take a look at where the 2009 Falcons ranked in the NFL versus the 2008 Falcons, using some of our preferred statistical categories:

                                                  2009                    2008

Defense
Opp. passer rating                 22                         18            
Sacks                                        26                         11
Yards per carry                        8                           28

Offense
Passer Rating                       19                            10
Yards per carry                      18                              9

General
Points (+/- )                          15  (+38)               11 (+66)            
Turnovers (+/-)                    11 (+3)                   21 (-3)                
vs. +.500 teams (+/-)         1-5 (-67)               4-3 (-14) 

What we have here, folks, is a team that back-slid pretty much across the board last year, from an 11-5 team that wasn’t as good as its record to a 9-7 team that was maybe as good as its record.   They were decent but hardly dominant in 2008, and far less so in 2009.  You win and lose close games, and that comes and goes, but point differential for a season and your record against winning teams?  By contrast, the Saints, 8-8 in 2008, had a superior +70 point differential and a whopping +169 last year.  As Rasheed Wallace so beautifully coined, “Ball don’t lie.”

The primary line of excuse offered by the apologists, of course, is injuries, which would be acceptable if the Saints hadn’t gotten absolutely clobbered by injuries last year, as the fifth-most injured team in the NFL, by Gosselin’s ratings, or the fourth, by Football Outsiders’ adjusted ratings, compared to the Falcons’ ranking somewhat in the middle of the pack (18th and 15th) under either methodology.

The apologists further break it down by pointing out that QB Matt Ryan missed three games last year.  Couple of thoughts here. First Matt Ryan’s passer rating last year?  80.9.  Chris Redman, his replacement?  78.4.  They went 1-2 in those three games, losing to the Eagles and Saints and beating the Bucs.  Really think all that changes just because Ryan’s in there?

Also, last year they were without stud running back Michael Turner.  I’d figure that would be more important, if they had dropped off from more than 4.4 yards per carry on offense in 2008 down to 4.2 without him in 2009.

Relevant?  Sure, somewhat.  Overrated in importance by most observers?  Absolutely.  They were no less healthy or unhealthy in 2009 as in 2008.

We can take it a little further, anecdotally, without comparing the 2008 Falcons to the 2000 Saints, both of which popped up from previous disaster to make the playoffs, riding a new quarterback, the energy of a new, first-time head coach and a somewhat underestimated talent base that had largely quit under the truly disastrous previous coaching regime.   I wouldn’t torture the nation’s 18 Falcons fans like that.

But, realistically, Mike Smith was a career college coach who then served reasonably admirably as a Baltimore assistant from 1999-2003, seeing one Super Bowl win, and then labored under coaching legend Jack Del Rio in Jacksonville for five years.  I’m not saying you need a pedigree from the Walsh/Holmgren or Parcells coaching trees to consistently field a top-tier contender….but it says here that Mike Smith has to spend good and valuable time on good-faith feeling his way through, not to mention trial-and-error, where other coaches have already had the master class.  I’m not saying he’s more Jim Haslett than Bill Belichick, but that’s the way to bet.

So what does all this prove?  As usual, say it with me, kids, nothing.

And yes, the Falcons could very well win the NFC South and go deep into the playoffs this year, because right now we’re all 0-0.  Yes, they have a relatively young team,whatever that means.  Yes, they played us reasonably close twice last year, but let’s face it, division games are always different, and those were both Milton Berle games [tm - Bill Simmons] for us, and there was not a moment in either game where I though we were in any real danger of losing.  

Sorry, we’ve just sort of looked at the tape here, and forgive us if we don’t see any one single characteristic about the Falcons that jumps out and says, yes, 2009 was the aberration, this ballclub’s about the make The Leap.  Great young secondary?  Nope.  Bunch of young puppy studs on the OL?  Proven quarterback?  Unh-unh. 

They’re just another bunch of guys, and we’ll see it play out all through 2010.

Honestly, I remain more worried about dropping one to the Panthers.  John Fox’s being a tremendous pain in our ass for the last god knows how many years, that’s more than confirmation bias right there.

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Man of the Match:  This week’s MOTM is Third Down Devery Henderson.  ‘Twas not that long ago that he parlayed a giant Senior Bowl week into getting taken 50th in the entire 2004 draft.  Obviously, he hasn’t turned into the kind of rotate-their-coverage dominant WR we wanted, but, let’s face it, only the purplest LSU fans weren’t at least a little worried it was a bit of a reach at the time.

At the same time, while the greatness didn’t appear, Devery, never the most natural pass-catcher in the world, kept grinding and working hard and making a professional football player out of himself.  It’s great that he’s got almost a 20-yards-a-catch career average, with a TD about every 10 receptions and 120 first downs on his 157 career catches.

More important?  He turned himself into reasonably dependable possession receiver last year, with his lowest TD total but highest yardage season ever, capped off with a Super Bowl where Drew Brees looked for seven times and hit him seven times for only 63 yards.  No drops, moving the chains.   Third Down Devery Henderson.

We’ve come a long way since 2005, and so has Devery.  Maybe he’s not Fred Belitnikoff, but without his work underneath, maybe we don’t win the Super Bowl.  Good on ya, Devery.  Wear that ring with pride.

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 Dynasties and Wannabes:  Picking up where we left off a couple of weeks ago http://www.girodstreetendzone.com/2010/08/01/the-report-who-you-gonna-believe-edition/, we take a look (wincing, mind you) at the 1981-1996 San Francisco 49ers.

Franchise Stability:  Eddie DeBartolo.  One of the few great felon-owners in recent history.  Knew how to get just enough limelight and get out of the way.  DeBartolo, GM John McVay and the great Bill Walsh fit together perfectly.  Seamless chain of command, despite the unusual power in the head coach.

Coach:  Bill Walsh.  Probably overrated as an offensive innovator (lots of cribbing from Paul Brown and Sid Gillman) but underrated as a talent evaluator and organizational manager.  Despite Payton’s affection for Bill Parcells, Payton reminds me more of Walsh.  George Seifert, the longtime DC who succeeded Walsh upon the latter’s retirement halfway through the dynasty, inherited a Bugatti Veyron and took real nice care of it, a little better than Ferris’s friend Cameron might have.

Quarterback:  Joe Montana.  Maybe the best QB of all time. Steve Young.  Maybe the best single season of all time.  Next question.

Offensive line:  Over a sixteen-year stretch, only fourteen different starters, littered with Pro Bowlers like Guy McIntyre and Keith Fahnhorst.  I cannot avoid noting that they were aided and abetted by the cut-blocking teaching of late OL coach Bobb McKittrick.   Because I am a spiteful S.O.B., I’ve always attributed some of their great success at the timing offense over the years to their willingness to recklessly endanger defensive lineman.   That being the case, if one of the Witchh Doctor’s defenders puts some poor bastard out for the season on a borderline late hit sometimes, I guess that’s the way the league wants it.

Contrast with the 1999 St. Louis Rams, a study in the mirage of greatness:

Franchise Stability:  Georgia Frontiere, former showgirl wife of Carroll Rosenbloom, who died in a mysterious drowning accident a few years after his team lost the biggest point spread NFL championship upset in history.  Draw your own conclusions.  Guys like Steve Rosenbloom running around.  Dick Vermeil stops by for a cup of coffee and a Lombardi.  I don’t even remember who the GM was without looking it up, but rest assured Vermeil called the shots.

Coach:  Burnout pioneer Dick Vermeil.  Vermeil took the Rams through 5-11 and 4-12 seasons, won a Super Bowl, and wept into the sunset, leaving the team in the hands of quarterback killer and closet Raymond Burr impersonator (watch Rear Window sometime) Mike Martz.  I like Vermeil, but think he caught lightning in a bottle in 1999, and took off before we could see any staying power.

Quarterback:  Kurt Warner.  When he has Pro Bowl WRs (Holt/Bruce, then later Fitzgerald/Boldin) and other talented fill-ins (Hakim, Breaston) to throw to, mystically, he’s great.  Otherwise, he’s a turnover-prone journeyman.  Everybody else is ready to limo him to the Hall of Fame, but I’ll never be convinced.

Offensive line:  Over the seven-year stretch from 1998 to 2004, a whopping 15 different starters, leading to a dropoff after the 2001 Super Bowl loss, a death-rattle 12-4 in 2003, and by 2005 Warner was a benched and departed shell and Martz was gone.   You just can’t redo your offensive line on the fly every year.

Basically a souped-up jalopy out of Dick Vermeil’s garage, driven into the ground by Martz, banging off curbs and trees and shedding bolts and fenders before heading off the cliff into the canyon.  They didn’t beat the Pats in the 2001 Super Bowl because they just weren’t mentally tough enough.

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Have fun watching Friday’s preseason game against the Chargers on national TV, and pray for naught but good health.  More next week.

GO SAINTS GO!

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 10:20 pm 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.