The Goat Speaks: Missing my Falcons
The Goat
GSEZ Founder
And so the second season begins. The world of maybe one-and-done, which we thought we left behind in the John Hughes era, only to rediscover in Seattle while the 2010 team was still looking for itself in a post-Lombardi fog 11 months later. January madness. Win or go home. Survive and advance. Nurse, hand me another cliche, stat.
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So where does that leave us in the opening round of the playoffs, other than seething with revenge for having the Bye, which was our Birthright, stolen from us?
We have solved Bruce Cockburn’s problem: the lions will be right here.
I spent part of this evening struggling with buyer’s remorse, having hoped for the Packers to beat the Lions last Sunday to avoid a third game with the Falcons for the opening round of the playoffs. Dumb, dumb, dumb of me. Dumb. I let my fear of the possibility, however remote, of having to deal with losing to the Falcons in the playoffs again blind me to a whole bunch of points that would have been more obvious if I hadn’t been drinking double Maker’s Mark old fashioneds all that afternoon:
1. We own the Falcons. We talked about this last week. I swear that somebody told me that Falcons HC Mike Smith has a tramp stamp across his lower back that says “Sean Payton” in old English letters. (Not sure I want to know how he knows, honestly.) There’s not a single thing they do well enough that conflicts with anything we don’t do that well.
2. Falcons QB Matt Ryan, Mr. October, is a hothouse flower who is not that mobile in the pocket and does not like to get hit, and that is not how you win in the playoffs. By contrast, Lions QB Matt Stafford is a tough SOB who threw for 5,000 yards this season and gets better every game. You win playoff games with great quarterback play, and without it you go home. We have not yet seen Stafford’s ceiling.
3. That 31-17 win we had over the Lions earlier this season was one of only two home games all year that was remotely close. Looking back, we had a 24-17 lead and the Lions had the ball with a first down at our 35 with 13:00 to go in the game. The Lions outgained us, had more first downs, and held the ball for 35 minutes. Thankfully, they repeatedly shot themselves in the foot with dumb penalties and three offensive PI calls. Not exactly a comforting blowout.
4. Lions HC Jim Schwartz is overly aggressive, but you’d rather have that in the playoffs than a guy like Mike Smith who really isn’t comfortable going too far from the book. Fortuna audaces iuvat. The Falcons, on the other hand, are the NFL’s version of an e-tough guy pounding out abrasive and cocky message board posts from his mother’s basement. You know: bitches. It’s why they punked out in the playoffs the last two years and are 1-5 (with the “1″ a stone gimme when we missed a chip shot FG in OT) in close games against us over the last six years. They were not going to rise up.
5. In addition, the Lions defense is stronger, with a better opponent passer rating and was fifth in INTs. It’s a strength-on-strength issue.
6. We know the Falcons get tight late in the season. The Lions are an unknown and could come in looser than a slacker’s earlobe with a six-inch spacer.
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Okay, now that that’s out of my system, let’s be rational. While the Lions are an improving team, fulfilling one of my core tenets that teams improve more during a season than they do during an off-season….so are the Saints.
As an amplification/coda to Claude’s opus from yesterday, not only is the Saints defense improving, but we’re also starting to see flashes from some of our younger players: CB Patrick Robinson, LB Tez Wilson, DE Cam Jordan, UDFA FS Isa Abdul-Quddus, even CB Johnny Patrick, only recently getting live PT during games in place of CB Leigh Torrance at the dime back. Any human organization, and an NFL team is hardly an exception, gets its leadership from its veterans but its energy from its youth. Once that youth starts to become truly productive, even in small bursts, the entire unit’s energy goes up.
Also, as I am not the first to note, we’ve had great negative splits this year, doing better in the back half of each of our NFC South rematches. Of course, in each case the latter game was at home, so that would stand to reason.
On the other hand, though, in any rematch, assuming things like relative team health were equal, who is going to benefit more from having game film and actual game experience to use for the rematch? The team coached by Sean Payton and Gregg Williams, or any other team in the NFL? It’s hardly a given that the team that got beat the last time has the most to gain; nobody ever considers the fact that there’s a good chance that Payton and The Witch Doc– The Family Practioner will solve more issues than the other guys will and that we’ll give them a worse beating the second time around.
The Saints also have the best all-around OL in football. LT Jermon Bushrod has made himself into a first-tier player, OGs Carl Nicks and Jahri Evans are both now playing the finest ball of their careers, and C Brian De La Puente and RT Zack Strief have both been revelations. Talk about strength-on-strength: nobody is in a better position to neutralize Detroit’s fine DTs than us. A great OL takes away a lot of risk and gives you room for error.
Finally, a small health note. It’s not exactly politically correct to say it, while I would rather not have RB Mark Ingram on injured reserve, we run the ball a lot better when power RB Chris Ivory is in. It jumped out at me watching the Lions replay — Ingram still has too much indecisive stutterstep once he gets the handoff, and it was materially affecting the timing of the running plays, sort of the dead vaccine version of Reggie Bush Tiptoe Disease. Ivory has better vision and smoother footwork coming off his first cut, and/or bouncing things outside. I think it’s correctible on Ingram’s part, but right now Ivory suits the team better.
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Now that we’ve completed our Tevye drill, I’ll admit to a mild level of concern about Saturday night, and that this could be a tougher and closer game than many koolaid drinking and cheese eating fans might consider possible. I think the Saints and the Packers are the class of the league, but the Lions are among the teams with the physical talent and level of quarterback play that could pull a Buster Douglas in any given playoff game. If they play a perfect game and we don’t, they could beat us.
I am going to lean heavily on Drew Brees here. The only losing formula I see on the table is him feeling pressure and throwing at least two untimely picks, our defense reverting to its earlier season form and suddenly being unable to stop the Lions for three-plus quarters, and then something going wrong at the end and somehow we lose a close game.
In all the lawyer shows, from Perry Mason to Law and Order and beyond, they’re always talking about “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That losing scenario looks pretty unlikely to me. A lot has to go wrong, and a good portion of it would have to go wrong with Drew Brees. It’s a home game. A night game. A playoff game for a guy with 15 TDs and two INTs in seven career playoff games and a post-season career passer rating of 102.0. To be truly concerned, I’d have to have a reasonable doubt about Drew Brees delivering high quality football in a playoff game on a Saturday night.
Saints 38, Lions 20. On to Green Bay, after a short layover in Frisco, and we’ll see what happens.
GO SAINTS GO!
6-8-2 to finish, 121-116-19 for the year. And that, folks, is why there’s a vig.