Because I remember Decembers in the 70s (1 Viewer)

[El Caliente]

Last week we held the 9th overall pick. The season before we had the 10th overall pick.

Talent wise we are night and day different than where we were in the 70s and before, however success wise we are about there.

 

[44slayer]

The old saints teams were losers. Its easy to HOPE for losers. They werent talented. At all. They werent good. At all. They were lovable losers. You know they had no business winning, but on a Sunday to Sunday basis, you hoped they could defy the lack of talent and ability and pull off a W.

This, is not that.

This team is better than the 6-7 record. They arent losers. The loser is wearing the headset. So we desperately need him fired, but I understand the older fans wanting to see the playoffs. But this just isnt a team you WANT to root for as long as you KNOW you have a HC that will torpedo the talent of his own team. You know the team is better than whats on the field, and you know what the problem is. The players know they are handicapped by Allen. None of them have confidence that their HC is going to put them in plus positions. The other sideline is always going to give the other team on the other sideline an advantage.

And thats where we find ourselves. An owner who hasnt built a business empire to respect the work and decisions it took to build said business empire. A GM that has rested on laurels from 15 years ago. And a HC that shouldnt be trusted with a controller on Madden 24.

 

[Artifactual]

Getting our Lombardi for the 09 season took a lot of pressure off of us older fans. When the game clock ticked off the last few seconds in Miami, I blurted out, "I can die now."

While we all want another one, many of us have accepted that we may never get to see another NFL championship. For me, any additional success is just lagniappe.

Not all of the older fans, organization members, or media types made it alive to witness the thrill of winning that Super Bowl. Joe Gemelli, Jim Finks, Hap Glaudi, Wayne Mack, and Buddy Diliberto were just a few. Buddy D never got to wear that dress. Bobby Hebert wore one in his honor. I'm not sure which one would have looked better. Either way, you sure couldn't have understood much of what they were saying. Buddy D telling it like it is, and Bobby asking and telling answers to his questions all at the same time. Only in New Orleans. May All Saints Fans No Longer Here With Us ~ R.I.P.

 

[SigFreudianSlip]

You nailed it at the start Bill. We were incredibly fortunate to catch not one but two bolts of lightning in a bottle, at the same time. The fall from Payton Brees almost had to be a big one.

 

[Bayouboy]

LMAO! This team is a dumpster fire and to even think about the playoffs is just comedy. I honestly can't get up and "hyped" for this team. When I watch them, I want to kick the dog. Drew Brees and the last 15 years have spoiled me. I grew up a has-been Saint, but we reached the mountaintop. I don't want to go back.

 

[lilvipa221]

Again, this season would be acceptable if we were a young, ascending team with a young Quarterback and some young talent leading the way. Instead we are ruining our chances of ever getting a Quarterback.

This is an old, expensive team in debt that will cripple the future at some point. With the crippling future expanding if they keep adding to the debt.

 

[mr.t]

The more I think about it the more troubled I am about my attitude in regard to the current state of our beloved football franchise. Yes, the performance of our team is anything but impressive these days, and it's a far cry from what we were treated to during the Payton/Brees era. But we had to see this coming. I mean, nothing good lasts forever. Perhaps we failed to prepare ourselves properly for this inevitable downturn.

Sure, we can choose to be miserable about it... even angry if we're the type who is prone to such emotion. But we can also choose to make the best of what we have down the home stretch of the 2023 season. This is not to take away from the misery of those who have a lot of money invested in this team and feel that they must make their feelings known to the front office that they are very displeased with the lack of production shown by the team they are supporting. More power to those who are earnest in their attempts to get this point across to Mickey & Gayle.

But frankly I think they already know. Everybody knows. Including every coach & player that is receiving the brunt of the criticism. But there is an undeniable fact about this Saints team that we must acknowledge. They aren't done yet. Not only are the Saints still in the hunt for the NFC South crown and a #4 Seed home game in the playoffs, but at the moment they also control their own destiny for those two prizes.

While it's easy to give discouraging reasons 'why' the Saints are still in the running, isn't it still better than what Decembers were like back in the 70s & early 80s? Like many of you folks I remember when the postseason dream was over long before we entered the last month of regular season football. How we used to yearn for the opportunity just to find ourselves in the short list of playoff participants. Even during the Mora years when our postseason visits came up empty, we were still happy & proud that we managed to get there.

I get it. It's hard to go back and accept mediocrity once again. But it can still be fun and exciting to cheer on your team even though hard reality says we won't get far. But it's still better than being eliminated by Thanksgiving. In fact this very situation is what the premise of KWTPF sprang from. No, I'm not going to fool myself into thinking 'this could be the year'. What's going to happen, is going to happen. But I'm going to enjoy whatever positive things may come about in the next 4 weeks. Chances are I'll be a little less disappointed when the inevitable happens. But either way, I just need to take myself back to those days when hope was always fleeting so that I can find some joy in knowing that this December we still have something special to play for.

Geaux Saints!

I understand completely. I was around for the first 15 years . They were fun but terrible. I don't want history to repeat itself

 

[mr.t]

I have watched Saints teams since the 60's and I never pull for them to lose, however, I have seen enough to know that this team is going nowhere by the way they are playing. There is no magic switch to flip to make them any better than they are. As we use to say in the past, "wait until next year".

I understand but I always have a glimmer of hope since the first season

 

[broccoli60]

Not all of the older fans, organization members, or media types made it alive to witness the thrill of winning that Super Bowl. Joe Gemelli, Jim Finks, Hap Glaudi, Wayne Mack, and Buddy Diliberto were just a few. Buddy D never got to wear that dress. Bobby Hebert wore one in his honor. I'm not sure which one would have looked better. Either way, you sure couldn't have understood much of what they were saying. Buddy D telling it like it is, and Bobby asking and telling answers to his questions all at the same time. Only in New Orleans. May All Saints Fans No Longer Here With Us ~ R.I.P.

This. When Hartley’s kick went through the uprights in the NFCCG the jolt all of us had was incredible. After us friends went outside and could hear fireworks and boats on the river and Intercoastal Canal sounding their horns and my buddy and I looked at each other and we had tears in our eyes. His for his dad and me for my dad and aunts and uncles who I went to the games with. We watched so much bad football I can’t not want this team to win regardless of the situation.

 

[Optimistic Ozzy]

Those 70's teams were terrible but I watched anyway because I loved my Saints. Well, I watched the games that weren't blacked out. It was all I knew.

Presently, I have no expectations for this team. It is what it is.

My grandmother raised me from age 10 until I graduated high school. We had this long winded preacher who didn't know when to stop. It would aggravate me to no end when he ran past 12 noon. After all, I had to get home in time to see the start of the 2nd quarter and just how far behind we were. Always had a glimmer of hope, but it wasn't realistic to think we would win. Those were the days.

 

[Artifactual]

Those 70's teams were terrible but I watched anyway because I loved my Saints. Well, I watched the games that weren't blacked out. It was all I knew.

Presently, I have no expectations for this team. It is what it is.

For younger members here, blacked out didn't mean wearing all black to the games. This was an era when TV had an agreement with the NFL to not show local games if they weren't sellouts. As much as Saints fans have supported the Black and Gold, there were times that the Saints didn't sellout their home games in the 60s and 70s when they played in the old Tulane stadium, which held about 90,000, before beginning play in the Superdome in 1975, which holds about 70,000. There were also times that the Saints didn't sellout their home games in the Superdome. Winning a Super Bowl changed that forever.

My grandmother raised me from age 10 until I graduated high school. We had this long winded preacher who didn't know when to stop. It would aggravate me to no end when he ran past 12 noon. After all, I had to get home in time to see the start of the 2nd quarter and just how far behind we were. Always had a glimmer of hope, but it wasn't realistic to think we would win. Those were the days.

And again, to enlighten the younger generation of Saints fans here, cable TV wasn't a thing yet in the 60s and 70s. If you missed any part of the broadcast, there wasn't a method in which you could pause or record the game to view at a later time. It wasn't until the early 80s that the VCR became a common household item that allowed you to "tape" the game so that you could watch it at a later time. The technology today at our fingertips on our cell phones and throughout the many ways programming can be viewed on TV is lightyears ahead of days past. Not to mention the quality of the picture we view today.

I'm with you Ozzy. In the late 60s I would watch the clock in anticipation of getting out of church and would try to hustle my parents to the car without any mingling. I made sure to have the radio in the car tuned into the game as soon as it started. My dad would always treat the family to the local malt stand for lunch after church before going home. I was always begging to go home to eat instead of eating in the car. I could hardly wait to turn the TV on.

 

[HoustonSaint68]

Getting our Lombardi for the 09 season took a lot of pressure off of us older fans. When the game clock ticked off the last few seconds in Miami, I blurted out, "I can die now."

While we all want another one, many of us have accepted that we may never get to see another NFL championship. For me, any additional success is just lagniappe.

This, this, this.

Of course, it's just football and relatively meaningless in the larger scheme of life. But it's good to hold onto some bit of childhood as one ages, and a Saints Super Bowl was the single, childish, selfish guilty pleasure that I held onto. I, too, said "I can die now" when the clock hit 00:00 -- it was my personal Rosebud.

Would I like another? Sure. But 2009 did all that was needed for that little child inside to be happy.

 

[Saint KayBee]

I always read the phrase “Payton and Brees raised the standards around here” with a raised eyebrow — what they truly did for fans was elevate what you believed was possible, while they were employed by the team. And now neither of them is. Teams don’t just casually replace a Hall-of-Fame head coach and quarterback with the next one they pick up from off the factory line. Since the older Packers, winners of the first two Super Bowls and the pre-merger NFL championship the year prior, experienced an entire generation worth of disappointment from 1968-1992, with 5 winning seasons and only 2 playoff trips during that time: Replicating success in the NFL is difficult, if for no other reason than the other guys are trying really hard to win, too. No opposing team is going to just roll over and affirm the fan perception that the schedule is easy. I think the fairest thing to say we’ve learned these past two seasons is, when it’s not Drew Brees running the offense as called by Sean Payton, that level of success that we as fans knew — that expansion of what we believed was possible — is a lot harder to achieve.

 

[El Caliente]

Getting our Lombardi for the 09 season took a lot of pressure off of us older fans. When the game clock ticked off the last few seconds in Miami, I blurted out, "I can die now."

While we all want another one, many of us have accepted that we may never get to see another NFL championship. For me, any additional success is just lagniappe.

You can say that again. Since the Saints won’t the Super Bowl in 09 my investment of energy into the team hasn’t been the same. The stress of 27 years was over, and now when the team is getting curb stomped at least I can say we have won one. Many teams still can’t make that claim.

 

[Bill]

You can say that again. Since the Saints won’t the Super Bowl in 09 my investment of energy into the team hasn’t been the same. The stress of 27 years was over, and now when the team is getting curb stomped at least I can say we have won one. Many teams still can’t make that claim.

That's right. Including the "28-3's" over there in Georgia!