SaintsBro

Duncan survived a savage round of layoffs and cutbacks at the Times Picayune/Nola.com by being contrarian against Payton/Loomis/Benson, and by being "controversial" in finger-quotes; when the paper's new management came in, they noted that his articles had lots of comments and generated lots of user response across social media platforms and websites like this one. So they decided to keep him on, while at the same time firing other sports beat writers from the paper, and gutting arts and leisure coverage, political coverage, and scaling back their hard news reporting....Duncan got the message and he knows where his bread and butter lies. WHAT he says is not important to his editors, it's the number of comments/links/clicks/posts that the article generates, creating traffic for the site....

That said, I think he was too generous to call the Saints "middle class." The Raiders are actually more like a "middle of the pack" team these days, and they just PUNCHED THE SAINTS IN THE MOUTH, in their own house. I can't disagree with Duncan on that. The Saints right now are a long way from being seriously competitive.

saintfan

We punched 'em right back is what we did. With 4 rooks at DB, and 2 of 'em undrafted?

We punched 'em right back I tell ya!

Halo

I wouldn't call the Raiders middle of the pack by any means. Most publications picked them to win the AFC West. Some players from Harbaugh 49ers migrated and they have been building a good team for a few years. Just sayin'.