here here! Well said!

That brings up a good debate. Turning point or sinking ship. You can look at it both ways, I guess. When the Saints shocked the NFL world in 2000 by winning the division and their first ever play-off game with a first-year coach and an inexperienced back-up QB, it gave Saints fans hope for a bright future. Every \"assumed\" the Saints would be a force the following season, and it was the turnaround everyone had been waiting on for years. Then comes the 2001 season. What a disappointment! So much potential, so little production. Too much bickering and drama in the locker room caused a lot of the problems, so we were right back where we started. In the hole. The front office made some key moves and got rid of some of the poison that was hurting the Saints. Good job! Now maybe we can play some football? Of course, we can. We get the most explosive offense that I\'ve ever seen in my history of being a Saints fan, but a defense that couldn\'t stop a pre-schooler from flicking a booger on them. So we turned the corner in one aspect, but backpedaled in the other. We traded off defense for offense. At least they saw what went wrong after the 2001 season and did what they could to correct it. Now maybe they\'ll see what went wrong after this past season and correct it, also. I believe every year is a turning point when you\'re a Saints fan, because it always seems like the ship can sink no further.

I\'d describe it as a ship that is taking on water at exactly the same rate in which it\'s crew can shovel it overboard. In 2000 the crew mostly beat out the sea and it looked like we would right the ship. However, high tide rolled back in and by the end of 2001 our crewmen were choking on water from the storm surge caused by hurricane Lockerroom. But the storm subsided, the tide went out, and once again it seemed like we were a few bucket loads away from sailing the high seas once again. But again, the sea showed that she\'s still better than our vessel, as another squal injured our crewmen and the pirate ship Defense put more holes in our boat than swiss cheese. It will be interesting to see how quickly Captain Haslett and Chief of the Boat Loomis can patch the holes and get our bilges working again so that we may one day sail into Lombardi bay.

Great posts guys. My 2 cents. We now have an offense to go all the way. This year I look for the powers that be to go after a defense to match. I keep thinking that Capt. Haz will go after defense with a vengance. After all he was a pretty good linebacker. I look for the 2003 version of the Saints to be quite different. The offense will have gelled into a power to be contended with. The defense will be the difference. I expect this group to be much better. I look for big things from the defense. Let\'s keep the faith and wait till next year. LOL

Dang it, that was my one mistake in my last post. I should have named the Saints\' ship \"Wait \'til Next Year.\"

Hell I thought you already named it that. LOL :P