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."

Vrillon82

Even after that with Sean Payton calling a bad game and still should of won it.

Rams were literally giftwrapped this SB trip by beating a Dallas team that chokes in the playoffs consistently and then no call PI.

Even though they finished 13-3 beating up cupcakes, I wager money The Patriots is going to beat them to where this will look like Broncos/Seahawks all over again. This is what happens when the wrong team or a 3rd rate team gets into the SB like the Broncos or early 90s Bills on a couple occasions.

WhoDat!656

I hope the lambs think they will get the same calls in the Super Bowl that they got in the NFCC game.

Rugby Saint II

Fascinating!

dizzle88

Yeah the refs missed some calls, but Brees missed a ton of throws too.

He favoured Dan Arnold vs Talib on third and long, when he had a wide open Ginn streaking across the middle.

He missed a TD opportunity when Tre'quan beat Talib on a go route early in the game.

I get that Brees' helmet got hit on the pick, but why throw that ball anyway? Absolutely worst time for him to panic and just loft a wounded duck.

We had several opportunities to go 10-14 points ahead and the offense squandered it.

D gave us the ball at the Rams 15 yard line, result = 3 points.

Your bonehead creator picked a fine chapter to omit from your memory bank....let me ask you, does a machine like yourself ever experience fear? - Vegeta, DBZ

K Major

The Saints must find a red zone target -TE/slot guy this off season.

Tre & Kirk are still developing. I hope we bring back Dez .. if not I hope we go aggressively afer a proven vet (Tate, Beasley, James etc) to take the heat off of MT.

I hadn't given up on Cameron Meredith either.

Papa Voodoo

The thing that bothered me the most was the Rams' fake punt. We had crushed them on their 1st 3 drives and scored. We crushed them on their fourth and we should have played a fake punt with a fair catch if they punted.

How in the world everyone except the Saints knew that was going to be a fake is beyond me. I was yelling at my TV and, yes, they only got 3 out of it but we would have stopped them and scored on all 4 of their drives and that would have been a wrap.

SaintsBro

Interesting observations. In the Dome that day it certainly felt like an uphill battle against the refs and the overall momentum, as the game wore on and it got later and later into the second half.

billyt81

The last World Series was Boston vs LA. The Hornets drafted Kobe but traded him to the Lakers for Divac. Chris Paul left NO for LA. AD is leaving NO for LA. They let the Saints win the Bowl after Katrina. And amazingly the Chiefs actually got screwed by the refs more than the Saints did. I'll never watch the NFL again. LSU BBall is good this year. Go Tigers!

SaintsBro

This is ridiculous. If they were rigging it for the Saints, they would have rigged it in 2006 so we won against the Bears, when we were right there. 2009 was a long time after Katrina, too long to be connected. The 2009 team was a juggernaut, they won 13 straight games without any special help from the refs at all. Except MAYBE the Darren Sharper pick six against Miami, that was debatable whether he controlled the ball as he went into the end zone. But many times that year the refs were against us and Payton had to set them right. Remember the two point conversion catch in the Super Bowl? Payton had to challenge that to get it called correctly.

Quit with the conspiracy theories, I know you are down in the dumps right now but you're better than that.