BakoSaint

Think about it this way:

Rams: Got to a Superbowl they did not deserve. Became overconfident and took things for granted. Waited for ref help all season. Missed playoffs.

Patriots: Dominated a Superbowl opponent who did not deserve to be there. Became overconfident and did not address weaknesses in the offseason. Lost in first round of playoffs.

Saints: Worked hard all season in 2018 only to be cheated out of a win they earned. Entered 2019 playoffs with that ghost hanging over their heads and doubt in the back of their minds. Lost in the first round of the playoffs.

Everyone loses and people can be resilient, but I think its foolish to imagine that losing in certain very painful ways is easy to shake. It takes a lot of effort to give 110% and its harder to do that when being cheated out of what you would earn anyway is in the back of your mind. I don’t think Matt Ryan will ever bounce back from 28-3. I don’t think it will be easy for this era of Saints to bounce back from the no call.

UK_WhoDat

If true, then each individual of these teams need to become professional in their outlook ASAP. The individuals who were part of the teams when the bad call occurred, and especially the individuals who have since joined these teams.

Sport is a microcosm of life, in terms of ups and downs. Professional winning sports people deal with the downs an awful lot better than ordinary folk like me.

WillSaints81

We lost because of our interior. We underestimated the Vikings. Ginn Jr hit father time.

BakoSaint

It’s easy to say they are all professionals but ultimately what you are saying is psychology and trauma should not matter. The fact is they are human and those things will matter. Maybe not with all 53, but with enough to stick for awhile. If you say that a devistating loss etc should not linger in the back of a players head and cause issues, you can use the same logic to say nothing should cause issues. A QB who is short and has small hands should just work on their grip and release. A receiver who is slow just needs to practice routes more. If Tom Brady is old he just needs to eat more fiber. If a linebacker is 5’8 he just needs to use more leverage to tackle. Trauma and hubris are as real as anything else and every player is human and fallible. There are a few Drew Brees and Sam Mills and Tom Bradys but not many. A large part of the game is mental and when something very wrong happens it can mess with everyone involved in different ways. If a horrible game changing call went out way in the closing seconds of a playoff game I might decline it, because in the end nobody wins from cheating by the corrupt refs. What seems like a shortcut for the rams was more like a suicide vest.

dskyyksd

The Saints have merely shifted their horrible mojo from the regular season to the postseason. If you followed the team before 1987, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They are the same team in the playoffs that we watched in the regular season the first 21 seasons of their existence. Drew Brees turns into Archie Manning running for his life (the only difference being that Archie could) and average defensive lines turn into the Fearsome Foursome and the Purple People Eaters. And the age is starting to show on their one Lombardi trophy from that inexplicable 2009 season. Maybe there's a cosmic rule that a Manning has to lose if the Saints are involved and Peyton fit the bill that day. Poor Archie. He couldn't even enjoy that day.

jeanpierre

Ginn was DOA when he signed with the Saints - terrible signing; same criticisms throughout his career were confirmed when he couldn't thrive in the Saints offense. Three years of Drew Brees wasted...

And his character is a subject because he made it so with his fastest NFL man alive boast and failed to show for what evolved to a charitable event because of the efforts of others...

Rugby Saint II

Payton used him in a unique way his first year and Coach hit him with the whoopin' stick and he got better. Then he back slid.....and since then he's been worthless for a couple of years now.

CHA_CHING

I'm so tired of hearing about this. You guys need to move on from 2018.

I posted this before, I might as well post it again. This is Brees' splits from 2018.



We peaked in November last year, kinda like we did this past year.

Something happened with Brees and he just tanked after the Dallas loss. He started looking like Peyton Manning at the end of 2014. I made this comparison and it enraged a lot of people, but really, go back and watch some tape on Manning in 2014. He started out red hot that year. Denver looked like a surefire pick to go back to the SB and avenge their loss from the previous year. Manning was on fire and when they traded for Emmanuel Sanders, it didn't look like anyone could stop them. Then week 11 happened (same week for us when we got exposed in 2018) and they ran into a Rams team who exposed them. Manning was never the same after that. His INT percentage skyrocketed, his yards and completions went down and he just looked broken. Brees looked just like this at the end of 2018. This was when Denver transitioned from a juggernaut offense to needing their defense to do heavy lifting and bail them out of games. They limped into the playoffs 12-4 and went out early cause their offense was broken, and even in that playoff loss, their defense played well enough to win. It came down to Manning having a terrible game and their offense not putting points up.

Dallas was the team who exposed us in 2018 and wrote the blueprint on how to stop us. They showed everyone that all you had to do was get pressure on Brees, then make sure you gameplan around MT and Kamara, then the Saints have no one else to scare you with. It worked for them. It also worked for Tampa, Carolina, Pittsburgh, Philly and... yes... even the Rams.

Defense bailed us out in every win after the Dallas loss and that includes playoffs. We pretty much were a mirror image of that 2014 Broncos team. Brees ended the year #2 behind Mahomes in MVP. People have forgotten that Manning was the frontrunner in 2014 for MVP and even with his hard decline at the end of the year, he ended the season with great overall stats some that were even better than MVP golden boy Rodgers. Rodgers ran away with the MVP in 2014 after Manning's decline, much like how it became zero contest Mahomes was getting it after how bad Brees had played in December.

While you all scream that we were guaranteed an easy SB victory last year cause "the Pats weren't that good! The AFC East is weak! The Rams didn't deserve to be there!" one important thing forgotten is - we were one Alshon Jeffrey dropped pass turned INT from being one and done in 2018. This team was never the same after Dallas slapped them around in week 11.

Go back and watch that playoff win against Philly and it really tells you all you need to know about how badly Payton has been out-coached in the playoffs since 2009. We barely scored 20 points in a game where our defense held the Eagles' offense to under 90 yards for 3 quarters. Barely 20 points and in the end, they were one mistake away from beating us. It was almost like we were gift wrapping it to the Eagles in the end by going for a kick way out of Lutz's range and giving them perfect field position in the end. We also couldn't stop shooting ourselves in the foot with dumb penalties. Oh wait, that's the refs fault. No one ever wants to own up to the fact this team commits dumb and boneheaded penalties.

Lost in all the talk about the non-call is that we had only ONE net positive play the rest of that game after the Rams came back and tied it 20-20, and it was Brees' bomb to Ginn that was nearly intercepted. Hell, even on the non-call play, if the CB would've been watching the ball instead of trying to maul Tommy Lee Lewis, it would've been an easy INT.

Say what you want about the Patriots dominating the Rams easily in the SB, but I have zero doubt they would've done the same to us and probably much worse. The Rams had Wade Phillips as DC who has a long history of slowing down Brady and giving the Pats offense major issues. We have Dennis Allen and a zone defense that Brady most likely would've shredded. Brady historically has posted some of his greatest games against weak zone defenses. Go back to 2017 and he lit us up in that game. ALL those big wins against Pittsburgh in the past 15+ years he was tearing up their zone defenses.

The Rams also moved the ball pretty well on us for most of the entire second half. Secondary was gashed by their receivers and they took advantage of the mismatches. LOL if anyone thinks Gronk wouldn't have had a big game on us.

Our offense struggled to end the year in 2018 though and I can see a SB against the Pats coming down to us not converting third downs, Brees rolling out and having no one to throw to so he checks it down and the Pats completely shutting down Kamara. My gut has long told me we probably lose something bad like 31-14. I think it would've been close early on, then the Pats run it up late after some turnovers. That's always been how I pictured that possible SB scenario.

We need to get over this persecution complex stuff and just own up to the fact that we've screwed around and this team needs to take accountability and stop blaming refs and wanting rules changed.

CHA_CHING

I think it's more than 3 years of Brees' wasted. He is past his prime and really his last GREAT season (one where he was great all year and didn't have an epic collapse) was 2016. We were 7-9 that year.

Most of Brees' best seasons, we finished 7-9.

The one "lost season" for me is 2012. We still averaged 28 points a game that year and Brees would've been an MVP candidate if they were winning games. He was right behind Manning and ahead of Rodgers all year in the stats. But even with Payton and no Bountygate, we most likely still finish 7-9 that year cause the 2011 team had a god awful defense and 2012 was simply that revelation being revealed.

Why the hell did we not go after Emmanuel Sanders this year? I just don't get it. The Niners got him, then decided to rub it in our faces by lighting us up with him having a big game.

Payton, Allen and Loomis are to blame for all of this. Not Roger Goodell or the refs or any conspiracy theories. Loomis and Payton put this roster together without any decent WRs outside of MT. Payton is the one who was out-coached thoroughly in all 3 of our playoff exits. Allen is the one who can't defend the big plays on defense and screws it all up.

BakoSaint

Wow I can’t believe the effort Al Riveron went to sign up for this forum and type a 100,000 word reply. If the Rams and Patriots were so amazing and unbeatable last year why did they get eliminated before us by lesser teams this year? We might have lost to patriots last year but we might not have. Brees is a much better qb than goff even with his hands tied behind his back. You can say its a persecution complex but i say you are just advocating submission to the whims of the refs. Statistical analysis has shown that the main connection between home field advantage and winning percentage is that the road team is typically penalized more harshly. We fight all season for home field and then when we are at home, the refs consistently penalize us more. Do I have a persecution complex? Maybe. About like Anne Franks