CHA_CHING

What's up B&G. Been a while since I've been able to post. Had some serious issues with my heart and blood rate that put me in the hospital a few months back where I stayed for a few weeks. I'm doing much better now thankfully and have been since late November, but I needed time away from the online world. I've watched every game and had a bad feeling about this team, but didn't really want to ruin any positive vibes here. Like I usually have for the past several years, I've been hanging out over on Pats forums since after Christmas. Love them or hate them, their fans have been the most kind to me online and in real life when knowing I'm a Saints fan, so I have no ill feelings whatsoever towards them and it's refreshing at times not having to hear about the refs and non-calls. Anyways, enough about me. I have some things I want to bring up about this team.

We should've seen this coming as this Saints team had many question marks on them all year. Week to week, you were never sure which version of them was going to show up. As fans we get so over confident when this team cranks out a winning season. Personally, this loss don't even really bother me that much. I have felt it coming for a while and in a weird way I feel relieved. Relieved that we didn't go into Lambeau and have Aaron Jones become Beastmode 2.0 against us, or watch Aaron Rodgers put up a hail mary bomb on us like Cousins did at the end of this game. Even if we squeak this game out, I am 100% certain Green Bay would've embarrassed us. This beating also isn't as bad as having to go into Candlestick and get pummeled by the Niners. Yeah we put up 40+ on them, so what, that was a loss. We weren't going to repeat that performance in Candlestick.

The over-confidence was our downfall here and we as fans were over-confident on many things.

I have had such a bad feeling about this team since the 49ers loss. That one game really told us all we needed to know about the Saints. They crapped the bed when it mattered most on defense in the end, but worse than that, look at the points SF put up on us. That was Jimmy G's break out game. While many fans bring up that we scored 40+ points in that game, I think it's completely ignored and overlooked, that for 10+ minutes in the second half, we only had 2 field goals. Payton took his foot off the gas when we got to a lead and tried to play it safe. This same bad play-calling is why we lost to the Rams in the NFCCG. For some reason, Payton has gotten conservative at times in big games when we have leads in the second half.

The Vikings were never going to be a pushover. That MNF loss to GB shouldn't have been taken for granted. They were missing Dalvin Cook, and as you seen today, he had a big game on our defense. Hence why I think had we won, Aaron Jones would've been Beastmode 2.0 against us.
Main reason though Minnesota should've been taken seriously is that we have always struggled with Zimmer's defenses. Even though we beat them quite soundly last year, it helped that we had a pick six and the defense had all those turnovers.

For some reason, this team has an extensive history at this point of making mediocre QBs look like Pro Bowlers. I had such a bad feeling getting to play Kirk Cousins. I expect next week he'll revert back to being the fraud we know him vs the Niners. Back in 2016 I really wanted the Saints to hire Wade Phillips as DC and bring him back to the team where he started his career. We stuck with Allen and you can see the results.

The defense actually played OK today in my opinion, they just missed on some plays. The defense was also fine in the 2018 playoffs. Remember when they bailed us out vs Philly? We could've been one and done last year, and then against the Rams they did everything but couldn't finish the game due to our offense stinking it up. Today's loss and last year's isn't on the defense. That old saying "defense wins championships" isn't always true. You need a QB that performs better and an offense that don't lay a giant egg. Look at New England last night; #1 ranked defense and their offense couldn't score more than 13 points.

On the other side of the ball, let's talk about our 40 year old quarterback. So many fans have been screaming it for a while now Brees' stats, Brees' numbers, QBR, TD/INT ratio, etc etc. I know this is a tough pill to swallow, but Brees' decline is very real. Manning, Brady and even Aaron Rodgers have all managed to squeak out some amazing games after their declines set in. Aaron Rodgers was able to have a monster game this year vs Oakland that fooled many people into thinking he was back to elite form. Brees is no different being that he's had some great games after his decline set in. For all the talk about the last 3 weeks over how great his numbers have been; we beat the crap out of 2 sorry lackluster teams (Indy and Carolina), then Tennessee dropped 2 INTs he underthrew on deep passes. Today the Vikings were there to catch that underthrown deep ball!

Brees has not looked the same in a while now and it's OK. He's 40 years old, this happens. I have long said that people who think he play into his 40s are nuts and I stand by that. Both he and Brady have looked like 2015 Peyton Manning at various times over the past year. The only difference is, Manning's INT percentage was sky high in his last year cause he didn't want to become a checkdown artist and was still trying to force the ball down field when his arm strength was gone. Brees I hate to say it, has been Captain Checkdown for quite some time now. If that was Teddy Bridgewater, this forum would be wanting him traded even though we were 5-0 with him. Brees gets a pass when he dinks and dunks the entire game. Today he couldn't do anything until the 4th quarter and most of that was due to Taysom Hill runs and Minnesota's defense finally tiring out.

Look, I love Brees like the rest of this fan base and will forever be grateful for what he brought us. We may never have another HoF QB, but it's time for him to retire. We would be crazy to let Bridgewater walk after he went 5-0 with us. Bridgewater could be our future or at least a bridge until we could get a prospect like Trevor Lawrence.

We don't have any depth on WR besides Michael Thomas and occasionally Jared Cook. I don't know why in the hell this team didn't aggressively pursue Emmanuel Sanders before the trading deadline. He came into the dome and lit us up when we played the 49ers. That's the main difference between us and them. The Niners have speed and are loaded on offense. We haven't really had a high firepower offense since 2016. The biggest issue with the 2017, 2018 and 2019 Saints offenses is that all 3 of them weren't well equipped to engage teams in shoot outs. Outside the 49ers loss, most of our losses over the past 3 years are games where the offense can't figure it out and get held below 20 points.

Payton's play calling is also a problem and was honestly my greatest fear going into the playoffs. The non-call last year was basically a shiny object being waved in front of the faces of this fanbase. I have long said that they lost last year due to the offense screwing around and not shutting the door on the Rams.

Payton has been out-coached in ALL of our playoff losses. Even though we came back vs Minnesota in 2017, Zimmer out-coached him for 3 quarters. That was no different here. And yes, the NFCCG last year with the stupid non-call, he was out-coached in that game too. Go back and re-watch that and look at some of the WTF play calls from that game. That last drive with the infamous non-call? Poor clock management. Hell, he poorly managed the clock vs the Eagles and no one gave a crap cause we won that game. We could've been one and done last year if Jeffrey don't drop that ball that gets intercepted.

Today was no different. He force-fed Kamara, kept running long pass plays, then dink and dunk. At one point, they ran a play that had no chance of completion just to try and draw a PI flag. The same crap that happened against the 49ers. We didn't try to get Murray involved until the second half and by then, it was almost too late. The worst for me was the drive where Brees had the fumble. Taysom Hill was single handledly taking the game over, then we go back to passing only for Brees to fumble.

This team under-performs in the playoffs and this is the third consecutive year. In 2017, we could've easily lost to Carolina if Cam hits an accurate pass in the end or if the Panthers kicker makes his kicks early making the game much closer. Last year, the Eagles in all rightly hood, should've sent us home one and done. And now there is this one. Minnesota basically beat our ***es and I'm not in the least bit bothered or mad about it. This loss was well deserved on the team. It's weird I feel relieved, but I do, cause I can totally picture Aaron Jones breaking off a Beastmode run on us and Rodgers ripping this secondary to shreds with bomb plays.

The one thing that drives me nuts about this fan base and why I usually avoid Saints forums and blogs and rarely interact anymore, is the idiotic conspiracy theories and constantly whining about refs, refs, refs, refs, non-call, non-call, non-call... This game had one too, which is yet another shiny object being waved in the faces of Saints fans to distract them from the bigger problem, which is poor play and play-calling that led to this nightmare of a game.
This fan base seriously needs to get over the persecution complex they have, thinking that we're the only team that has had to deal with bad calls. You think we have it bad, go talk to Lions fans. I really hope we don't spend another off season demanding rule changes and whining about the non-call OPI, cause even if you get that penalty, it's not like the Vikings weren't going to score on the next play. They would've just handed off to Cook and took it to the endzone or have Cousins burn us with another pass.

As for Brees window to another ring, I am starting to truly believe that window closed when we squandered his prime putting together historically bad defenses all through his prime. This is why you guys need to stop blaming the refs on this team's failures. The refs and Roger Goodell didn't cause us to waste Brees' prime years when he was posting better numbers than the QBs winning MVP awards. Payton is the one who hired SPags and later Rob Ryan and now Dennis Allen. Those 7-9 years are going to be remembered in history like Miami's mediocre years when Dan Marino was stuck with god awful defenses during his prime and couldn't even reach the playoffs after 1985.

Be thankful Brees has a ring BTW and won't get the immortal "choker" label that guys like Marino, Jim Kelly and others have, who went to SBs and lost them. Brees is always going to get a benefit of the doubt like Favre, Manning and even Rodgers, all cause he has that one ring. Guys without a single ring, don't get that privilege, as fans and armchair analysts are quick to label them "choke artists".

TL;DR this team was always going to lay an egg like this in the playoffs. Just be glad it happened now and not in Green Bay or San Fran. A loss in Lambeau would've sealed the Brees vs Rodgers debate for all the people who argue Rodgers is superior to him. A loss in SF would've been agonizing due to history and IMO I think the Niners would've kicked our teeth in for a rematch. Kyle Shanahan has humiliated Dennis Allen's defenses for years now.