I guess I am hypersensitive because I reside in an area far away from NOLA and have to listen to the fans and talk of the Philadelphia Eagles, but I just have to vent at the hypocrisy of things. Until the Saints beat the Patriots (and even after), many would say that the Saints haven't beat any team that is good. Even though we played some teams who were undefeated at the time, we really weren't " validated " until the Patriots game.  Even now there are doubters.  But, the Eagles are the new team to get a lot of attention because of their winning streak and playoff berth and possibility of winning their division.  Well, the Eagles have not beaten a team that is going to the playoffs this entire year!! And no one seems to notice this. Unless you count the Giants who are very doubtful.  The only playoff caliber teams they have played have been losses (New Orleans, San Diego, and Dallas).  These three teams are the only teams that had top level QBs who were playing well at the time (sorry, Cutler, Stafford, DelHomme, etc don't qualify).  And they lost badly to the Raiders, but now they get all the attention.  Well, one nice thing about the NFL is that there are no imposters when it's all over.  The Eagles play a desperate Broncos team with a return of Brian Dawkins to Phila, and then the Cowboys in Dallas.  If they win bith of those games, I will tip my hat to them.  If they lose, I will say I saw it coming.  

Saints just signed  new TE that was on the Green Bay roster as injured reserve(?) and was undrafted free agent with Indianapolis in 2005. Apparently he has started 7 games previously. Saints put Marcus Mallei on IR with a hamstring injury. I guess they are trying to free up Dave Thomas to play FB if Shockey needs more time.  Makes me wonder how hurt the guy going to IR was, but I don't really know the rules in regard to that. I'll try to provide the link, but if anyone knows how a player such as Humphrey can go on IR in preseason and then be on an active roster later in the season, please let me know how that works.   The link is from the Saints Official website.

http://www.neworleanssaints.com/Articles/2009/12/Roster%20Move%20Dec%2022.aspx

I just have to add some perspective and be heard on this disappointing loss that is going to wind up being the best thing that happened to us this year in the end.

There's a lot of mention that Brees didn't play so well- He completed 29-45 passes for basically 300 yds and if Henderson didn't drop a ball in the end zone, well everything would be different.

Payton has done well this year but didn't call a great game. Not enough runs and should have called screen pass to negate the rush. Football 101.

Not having Shockey was HUGE. Why so? because now we don''t have our best TE OR our best healthy FB (Dave Thomas). Dave Thomas had a great game but we need him to do his usual role for us to be at our best, not for him to be a headliner.  But I am very thankful we have him.

Usually Payton compensates somehow for a loss such as Shockey, but this one he didn't do so well. I think our new FB will be a blesssing real soon and it will all work out and Shockey will get healthy.

The defense had a horrible 1st qtr.  But after that they only gave up only a fg in 2nd qtr and only 1 td in second half. So, we should recognize that. GW did fix things. Just a horrible start though.

Losing Reggie hurt, especially with Shockey out and our wrs getting doubled a lot.

I think when you have an undefeated team but you have a high paid DE underperforming, it's hard to shake things up a lot. Don't want to ruin chemistry. Hopefully now it can be fixed.  We need some tweaks on defense or at least 1 change. Also, I think whenever Sed is hurt, you have to play Pressley.

There is no team in the NFL where you can replace their top two CBs and not drop down a notch.  That happened. After the 1st qtr, when Porter played, we were much better.  Jenkins' training camp holdout is showing here.  Again, with Porter we were better, when Greer comes back - we will be real strong again.  With Porter/ Mc Kenzie, we are pretty good as well because Mc Kenzie can usually handle their #2.

We weren't as bad as everyone thinks except for the first qtr.  We won the rest of the game. Dallas played the best game they could have played. We were at 6.5 on a scale to 10. Obviously it was not our best performance, but we should have home field advantage throughout and I think this will be a growing pain for us to get to another level.

I know there is a lot of talk and concern about our defense, and clearly we miss Greer,Porter and Fujita.  But, I just had a great revelation!!!  We just faced 2 QBs the last 2 weeks that had career days against us.  And, they are both good QBs.  But, the thing that separates these two QBs from guys like Brees and Manning, is that they cannot do that every week or almost every week. But, make no mistake, they are capable as we have seen, of doing it on occasion.  So, instead of letting that scare us, we should gain confidence. Guys like Manning, Rivers, Romo, Mc Nabb, etc are not going to throw the ball BETTER than Redman or Campbell did- they threw the ball phenomenally. It was possibly the best day of their careers.  And, we took their best punch just like we would take anyone else's best punch- and we still won!  Peyton Manning would not have passed better than Redman did yesterday- he was phenomenal. It's as good as it gets.  And, when we get back to full strength and guys like Jenkins play later in the season and are better for all the experience, we will be even better.  We will be pressuring QBs better and we will be like early in the season.  But, we always take their best shot and find a way to win. It's not a fluke, it's for real.   

anyone know about Fujita having surgery?  Apparently he tweeted something about feeling better just before kickoff, and that he had surgery, but I haven't heard anything about it.   My guess us he had a minor arthroscopic "clean out" in a knee, but it would be nice if they released some info about it.
 

Oh, and since I need a few more words, can anyone comment on that booth review where it stayed in our favor, but everyone around me, even Saints fans, said that our receiver (Colston, Meachem whoever- I forget) had a foot on the out of bounds line and the completion should be reversed.  Anyone remember? I think it was late in the game.

Can anyone explain to me why I am watching postgame footage on FOX Sports of The Bengals locke room and they are chanting WHO DAT?  WHO DAT?  WHO DAT GOING TO BEAT THEM BENGALS??  I don't know, I had a few beers during that awesome Saints comeback, but what is that all about?   Am I hallucinating?  Did anyone else see that?  Help me out here.   I would really appreciate if anyone else who knew anything about that could comment.

While we are all pumped up and waiting for Sunday, I'd like to encourage everyone to go up on NFL.com and vote for Pro Bowl candidates. Apparently the Vikings are getting a big contingent voting for their guys.   A couple of things that pissed me off and a good tip----

- We have only 2 wide receivers nominated- Colston and Henderson. Eagles have 3- Maclin, Jacskon and Avant.

       Cmon, Avant and Maclin can't hold a candle to Meachem and Moore. We should have at least 3 nominations.

- For kick returners, they dropped the ball. We have Reggie that we can vote for but no opportunity to vote for Roby.

                      Should be a separate category for KO returners and Punt returners.

-  RB  we only have Pierre Thomas to vote for- no Bell. Giants have Bradshaw and Jacobs.  Pretty lame!!!

                TIP  TIP  !!!!

-  You don't have to vote for the Max- for example if you want PT to be and all-star and they say you can select 3 RBs, -   if you only vote 1 vote for PT each time he has a better shot at winning

               You can vote many more times than once- they allow it!!!!

The opponents who The Patriots have beaten have a combined record of 32-44!!!!  Check this out:

Bucs 1-10

Bills 4-7

Jets 5-6

Ravens, Jags, Falcons, Dolphins  6-5

Where is that defining game that got THEM credibility?? If anyone knows, please clue me in.  Also, the Bills game was basically won except the Bills' KR at 2:06 didn't take a knee so they could run the clock out and fumbled. Oh, yeah I forgot, they played the Colts pretty close.  I guess that's it.  So, the best teams they have beaten are Jags and Falcons. Not all that impressive. And, they lost to David Garrard and Mark Sanchez.  I can't even remember who the Bills QB is, but he almost beat them and TO only had 2 catches.  I really think the figures speak for themselves.  The teams that the Patriots have lost to have a combined record of  22-10.  What do you think??

I knew our boys would be fine.  I knew it and then I knew it more when, before the Tampa game started,  they showed Brees' rankings overall in pass completion %, yds per pass, red zone stats, etc.  He was like #1 or #2 before the Tampa game and everyone was wondering "what's going on with Brees?" Well, I think there were 2 things going on with Brees.  1) He's in the NFL!!!  For goodness sakes, he was ranked #1-2 in so many stats- he can't be perfect.  and 2) his Mom died and I am sure he was getting wind of the investigation and all that stuff that I am sure could be quite distracting.   

Now about The Patriots... we will win that game.  But, it doesn't really matter.  If we lose, we learn and we're better prepared if we meet them in the Super Bowl.  But, I think we will win.  They have a lot more at stake.  If they go 6-4, AFC home field is looking a little bleaker.  And they still have to deal with the Colts somewhere along the line.  No, they have a lot more pressue on them. We have more offensive weapons and our defense forces more takeaways.

They are good, but we should be better than them if we play well. We're fine win or lose, but I have officially changed my approach.  Previously actually wanted the Saints to lose a game to take any potential "monkey" off their backs.  Now, I want them to win out, and I don't want to see them lose a game,  but I am okay if they lose a game.  And, for the record, this is the way I knew this team could play and expected them to play.  This next game will be a lot of Payton/GW vs. Belicheck and I see Belicheck getting exposed.  I also see the Dome Crowd playing a big role in The Perfect Storm playing havok with The Patriots

One last point.  Our X-factor in our first 5-6 games was Heath Evans.  He was phenomenal.  We kind of forgot that, wondering why our offense was not so explosive after he got injured.  Then along comes Dave Thomas and after a couple of games he settles in and becomes a new X-factor. But not quite at first.   Much different than Evans.  And Eckel is getting more comfortable,too.  But just as Deuce Mc Allister would have had a little bit of a transition if he didn't have  Mike Karney, I think our offense had a little transition period without Evans and now we have adjusted.  We can't do the exact same things we used to do with Evans, but we have found other things that work.  I think that was a big factor we overlooked.  Kudos to Payton in that respect.  He's coaching his best year ever.   And obviously there is a transition without Moore a lot of these games, but overall we are adjusting and I like how we have done so.

I thought Roby did a nice job on the return and the return team set it up nicely.  St Louis cooperated well also, they seemed to do a poor job so it all came together.  It made me think of a post/comments a few weeks ago that claimed Roby was slow.  Well I never thought he was slow, I really like him as a returner. He's been very reliable and to me has looked very capable of breaking the long one so it was nice to see it happen.  So, I have 2 questions, unrelated. 1) Didn't that kickoff return affirm that he has good speed and is a good returner for us?
2) Can anyone comment on his return about 4-5 games ago that was probably his longest of the season before the retuern vs Rams. It was at home and there was a penalty at the end of the play.  I was in a bar and I think it was because someone threw a beer bottle or something on the field.  Is that what reeally happened because there was no commentary where I was watching.