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

[HouseCall]

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.

But you have to go back occasionally. There is no permanent pinnacle.

Your standards and expectations can surely change but sports do not operate in a vacuum. So at some point the best teams will have to regress and regrow.

The current situation is less than ideal and some would argue it’s just plain bad - but it was almost inevitable. To lose a HOF QB and a HOF coach in back to back seasons was going to send a shockwave through the core of the franchise eventually.

Loomis handled the shift poorly - but it happens to every team eventually.
Look at the Patriots post-Brady - and they still have their HOF coach.

There is no rise without a fall. It’s just the unfortunate truth.

 

[silverbullet]

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!

This team was done the minute Dennis Allen was hired two seasons ago. You can live in delusion land, but the ONLY thing positive that can happen at this point is to lose out. Winning against crap competition only emboldens Loomis' arrogance and delusion and prolongs the downfall and delays the rebuild.

 

[Bill]

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.

The Payton/Brees era spoiled me as well. (I think most Saints fans will admit this.)
If we ever find anything close to those days again it will be wonderful. But if we never do again, I don't want to act like we don't have a pro team to cheer for just because they may never match up to what we once had.

 

[Bill]

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.



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.

I used to love it back in the old days when some company would buy up the remaining tickets when they were short of having a sellout just so the locals who couldn't make the games could still watch the games on TV at home. Good times!

 

[NeverGiveUP2]

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.

So I have the DVD of the gam and watch it often...I still LOL when

We stop the Colts on 4th down and take over the ball... Leading by 14... We have the ball.. the Colts have no time outs and only 44 seconds remain....and Jim Henderson says

And it would APPEAR that the Saints are going to win the Super Bowl

14 point lead.... Colts with 0 timeouts... We have the ball

Only a Saints fan would understand....lol

 

[AARPSaint]

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".

In the old days, "wait until next year" was a statement of hope. I don't necessarily see it that way nowadays. Can we expect improvement next year? I wonder. To me, that's the most discouraging aspect of this team.

 

[Bill]

In the old days, "wait until next year" was a statement of hope. I don't necessarily see it that way nowadays. Can we expect improvement next year? I wonder. To me, that's the most discouraging aspect of this team.

I've never met a new season when I wasn't feeling a measure of excitement & hope when training camp cranked up.
I sure would hate for 2024 to be the first exception.

 

[silverbullet]

I've never met a new season when I wasn't feeling a measure of excitement & hope when training camp cranked up.
I sure would hate for 2024 to be the first exception.

I beat you by two seasons. Zero hope or expectations with Allen. Just hoping they would recognize the mistake as soon as possible. But they doubled down on dumb with Carr.

I remember watching meaningless games in the early 90s and wanting the team to win. Maybe I'm just older and more cynical but I can't even watch this current team. Like zero interest wasting my time on a Sunday for three hours of uninspired boring and bad football.

It's like a part of me died and I'm just venting about it here. Roger put my interest in the NFL on life support. Allen and CO pulled the plug

 

[Saint KayBee]

I used to love it back in the old days when some company would buy up the remaining tickets when they were short of having a sellout just so the locals who couldn't make the games could still watch the games on TV at home. Good times!

I’m a United Way kid - went to a lot of games via those donated tickets. We’d be the kids in too-big BOHN FORD or HIBERNIA BANK t-shirts.

Our seats were closer to Slidell than the end zone, and there wasn’t a lot of winning going on, but getting to see them play live was really cool as a child who didn’t think that’d ever be possible.

 

[bradman1965]

The opposite of hate isn't love, it's indifference and that's the 2023 Saints. At some point they'll have to rip the bandaid off, move on from an aging roster and start rolling the dice instead of extending the mediocrity.

 

[Bill]

The opposite of hate isn't love, it's indifference and that's the 2023 Saints. At some point they'll have to rip the bandaid off, move on from an aging roster and start rolling the dice instead of extending the mediocrity.

A total rebuild is coming one day, like it or not.
I won't be bothered one bit when it finally comes.
The sooner; the better.

 

[Day1]

So I have the DVD of the gam and watch it often...I still LOL when

We stop the Colts on 4th down and take over the ball... Leading by 14... We have the ball.. the Colts have no time outs and only 44 seconds remain....and Jim Henderson says

And it would APPEAR that the Saints are going to win the Super Bowl

14 point lead.... Colts with 0 timeouts... We have the ball

Only a Saints fan would understand....lol

I had seen enough Saints games to wait for 00:00. Then, and only then, I lost my sheet.

 

[J.T.]

This team has a LOT of needs, but they are not terrible. They are old and not well coached. They are tied to an average at best QB for the next two seasons. They have a good secondary and seem to keep "hitting" on young talent on that part of the team. Besides that ONE position group, I don't think the team is both good AND young at any single other position group. The Offensive Line is below average to bad. The RB room, is one deep and a few guys. The WR room has one legit NFL WR in Olave and Shaheed, who I think has a change to be a legit starter if he can stay healthy. The TE room....the best player is probably the guy with about five targets all year. QB....haha, give me a break....maybe Carr can be salvaged, but we are tied to him for two more years. The best way that position group can get fixed is to get a legit starter in the draft and not by trading up. this team has too many holes to trade draft picks for one guy. Defensive End.....we have one old guy who can still play, who we are tied to for years still, and one younger guy in Granderson, who I think can be a solid player for years, besides that we have beans and no bacon. At inside D-line, we likely hit on Bresse, besides that, it is an ok group at best. LB, our best guy is very old and still playing good and our next best guy might be playing out of position. We got "younger" on ST's not sure if we got better, likely we did not. Our Special Teams Coach is likely the best coach on the staff, by a mile, and he will probably leave after the season if DA is not fired soon and he is given the Interim Job. I would fire DA right now and hire Rizzi as Interim Head Coach and give him the job outright if he wins out. That guy has FIRE in his belly and I would bet the team would respond to him.

Honestly, this team needs 2-3 players at all positions except CB, Safety and QB (where they need one more guy). The only things keeping this team in contention are a bunch of lousy NFC South teams, a pretty good secondary, a good RB and the easiest schedule in the league.

Yeah, I would gladly take the playoffs, but if DA doesn't WIN a playoff game, he should be fired. This team needs a reboot and DA is not the guy to do it. But, I don't think you can fire the guy if he wins a playoff game, which is VERY unlikely.

 

[PuddinheadSr]

Easier to start over and rebuild if you’re really bad.

How?

It's always been my contention that you're never better off losing than you are winning. Besides the obvious--the worse you are the farther you have to go to be good, the more functional talent you have to find a way to accumulate in order to compete--each loss does more and more to embed a losing culture in the whole organization, particularly the younger players who haven't had an opportunity to learn what a professional needs to do to be a winner. Successful coaches are always saying "you have to trust the process" (aggravates the crap out of me for some reason...LOL), but it's really hard for a kid to trust the process if the process has never delivered for him. No one would pay any attention to Nick Saban's "process" if Alabama didn't have double-digit wins every season, least of all his players. All losing does is teach still impressionable players how much less work they can put in if they're going to lose anyway.

I also have thoughts about the "but we need to lose more so we can draft eight slots sooner in next year's draft" idea that is accepted as imperative by all the "smart guys". Been like a year ago so no link, but a really interesting piece I've read looked at past drafts and compared the careers of the first players selected at each position (WR, OL, etc.) with the next player selected at the same position, whether they were selected five picks later or all the way into the following round. Conventional wisdom says the first guy selected is gonna have a better career than the second often enough to make that early pick much more valuable, but in reality the first player selected at a position ends up having a better career than the next one at the position only 52% of the time.

Not a particularly compelling argument for instilling a losing culture. JMHO

 

[BikesBurgersBeer]

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!

Good post Bill.

I like to remember that we aren't only cheering on a football team, but the one that represents our city and region. Some folks don't get to experience that.