WhoDat!656

Saw this posted on another site.

The one irritating line of argument is that "the Saints had their chances earlier in the game." But did we really?

We scored on three of our five first half possessions.

In the second half, we forced a three-and-out, then drove 71 yards in 12 crisp plays (our first third down was the play we scored) to go up 20-10. To their credit, the Rams score a TD on a solid drive and it's 20-17, but now we have the ball and are moving again.

Drive #1 -- First play of the 4th quarter, we have third-and-7 at the LAR 47 yard line. Brees throws to Ginn on an out route, and it looks like what'shisname gets there early, but.....we're letting them play, right, so there's a no-call right there. By itself, that's probably fine. So we punt.

Drive #2. We have just forced our second three-and-out of the half, and with a penalty on the Rams for a chop block, we have first-and-10 at the Rams 46 with 12:22 to go. If we can move down and punch it in, that's not exactly sticking the knife in, but it puts the Rams in a very tough spot, down two scores late on the road. First play, there is a holding call on our best OL, Armstead, that was justifiable, I guess, but....I thought we were letting them play? There were 87 called pass plays, with three sacks, two runs and 82 pass attempts in that game, and not a single holding call on any of them, despite having two of the better pass rushes around on the field. And now we get a holding call, behind the play, on a first down running play, the only holding call of the game on either team, when it wasn't looking so hot for the Rams, who were still struggling to move the ball. Ends up being too much to overcome, and we punt again.

Drive #3. The No Call. Enough said. I guess we're "letting them play"

Drive #4. On the Brees INT, it's not like he's in a crowd of people. it's just him back there, and you can see him perfectly clearly, if you are Bill Vinovich, the referee whose primary responsibility on passing plays is to watch the passer through the full release of the ball against any roughing or cheap shots. Dante Fowler lunges at Brees while Brees is letting go of the pass, and hits him high with both hands, his left hand hitting the top of Brees's helmet and the right hand Hitting. Brees. Right. On. The. *******. Grill. Absolute textbook personal foul/roughing the passer. I guess we went back to "letting them play" again.

(The only decent "we stopped ourselves" in the above drives was the Hill/Kamara fumbled exchange. For the life of me, I think Payton overthought the use of Hill there -- we were rolling. Other than that, it feels like once the game got close down the stretch, it was quietly 11-on-18, and the second half shows how perfect and dominant you have to be to overcome it. And we're the better team, but not by so much that we could beat all 18 of them.)

In the first half, we had five drives for 144 yards on 32 plays. In the second half, despite the above, we have four drives for 149 yards on 30 plays. We were moving the ball. We were making the most of our chances, we were playing complementary football, we were protecting the ball. Switch any one, not even two, of those four calls/non-calls, on critical plays, and the Rams are in deep trouble. We just never got our rightful chance to finish them off.

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."