The tragedy of the 2010 season (2 Viewers)

[blackadder]

You don't determine a good year by numbers, even the W's and L's. Would you be happy if you knew you had the best college football team in the land but lost several games to inferior opponents, thereby knocking you out of the title game and BCS bowl?

Success is determined by your performance based on potential... To underachieve as a team is no different than to do it as a player, yet fans often look at the two fundamentally different.

I am proud we won 11 games and are headed to the playoffs, but I am disappointed because the only game I truly felt like the Saints were beaten in was Baltimore (and even then, we had our chances). Where are the games that offset these losses? Who did we beat this year we had no business beating? As such, particularly with our historically weak schedule I feel like we should be looking at 15-1. There have seasons as a Saint I have felt that we overachieved, hell I felt that way in 2006. The point is to play to your potential, the "nameless" opponent as Chip Kelly calls it. If that isn't good enough to beat someone, then at least you can tip your cap and feel good(relatively) about it.

Season is not over yet. There is no tragedy just yet.

We know this team has a record of showing up in the big games. Brees is usually at his best in the spotlight.

If the injuries prove to be minor and we have a 95% healthy Pierre Thomas, Chris Ivory, Colston, Reggie baqck on track, Graham and Shockey back we could conceivably make a legitimate run...

...if we can balance the attack with some good line play and a ground game.

 

[bornnraisedwhodat]

I agree with this thread.

 

[DomeDude]

Talk about spoiled, 11-5 and a playoff berth a tradgedy ? Give me a friggin break !!!!!!!

 

[jt21]

I'm confident the team will pick it up starting next week, but to have a shot at the Super Bowl the offense has to improve. Sure we struggled at the end of last year, but for most of the year the Saints had the best offense in the league.

With the turnovers, undisciplined play, and long stretches where we can't flat out move the ball (keep in mind this is a YEAR Long trend), this year the offense has been pretty average. An average offense gets it done if you are Baltimore or Pittsburgh, but we don't have the dominant D and pass rush for that to work, as under-appreciated as the D has been all year.

Again I'm confident they'll improve, but if they keep playing this way on offense it's going to be tough to hang with teams like GB, ATL, NE, Pitt or even the Eagles when their offense is running on all cylinders. Heck if we turn the ball over 3 times next week we could very well lose to the NFC West. Right now the offense isn't playing championship caliber ball. But good news is we get 2 weeks to fix it with a warm up game against the NFC west before the real playoffs begin.

 

[blackadder]

You talked about "tragedy" and playing to potential.

How do you play up to your full potential when you are starting or featuring a different running back every week, and your QB plays 4 or 5 weeks on a gimpy knee?

There's more to it, but that was a big part of it.

If there is a tragedy, it's that we had so many injuries to the running backs, and nagging injuries to other key players (Shockey, Hargrove, Thomas).

We need improvement up front. More time for Drew, better blocking for runners.

But it's not a "tragedy" yet.

 

[blackadder]

I'm confident the team will pick it up starting next week, but to have a shot at the Super Bowl the offense has to improve. Sure we struggled at the end of last year, but for most of the year the Saints had the best offense in the league.

With the turnovers, undisciplined play, and long stretches where we can't flat out move the ball (keep in mind this is a YEAR Long trend), this year the offense has been pretty average. An average offense gets it done if you are Baltimore or Pittsburgh, but we don't have the dominant D and pass rush for that to work, as under-appreciated as the D has been all year.

Again I'm confident they'll improve, but if they keep playing this way on offense it's going to be tough to hang with teams like GB, ATL, NE, Pitt or even the Eagles when their offense is running on all cylinders. Heck if we turn the ball over 3 times next week we could very well lose to the NFC West. Right now the offense isn't playing championship caliber ball. But good news is we get 2 weeks to fix it with a warm up game against the NFC west before the real playoffs begin.

Do not take the Rams lightly in the playoffs when you are turning the ball over and not running it well.

We should win, but don't count your chickens yet on a "tune up" game.

 

[billinms]

2006 : 10-6, Division Champs, went to NFCCG
2009 : 13-3, Division Champs, Superbowl Champs
2010 : 11-5, made playoffs, ?

This is a good time to be a Saints fan. I don't get all the negativity and certainly don't see 2010 as a tragedy. After all the losing seasons I suffered through I'm more than happy with the product this staff puts on the field.

 

[AceD]

I agree that the point is to try to win each game each week and see where you stand at the end of the year... That's kind of my point. We failed at that many times this season, incidentally, to teams that even the most passionate hater would deem inferior.

I disagree with this- I don't think it's "a great season" to take the best relative team in the conference (and would anybody here argue against that, that the Falcons, Bears, etc are in fact better than the Saints) and finish fifth with it. It would be tantamount to enjoying watching LSU finish 12th or so with a team that a consensus would argue is the best in the country.

People want to act like the regular season means nothing...since the reorganization, the odds of the 1 seed making the conference finals is over 50%. The odds of the 5- 12%. Yes we can do it, but we did ourselves no favors.

 

[boutte]

I'm not calling our season a tragedy but I'm certainly not especially happy with the teams performance. I think we're a much better team than we showed this year. We absolutely should have won HFA. No two ways about it. No way we should have lost to the Browns and Cardinals. It took a last minute miracles to beat the Cowboys and we barely squeezed one out against Bengals. The first Falcons game was a comedy of errors and we were lucky to get to overtime.

We showed what kind of team we should be against Pitt on Halloween. Two of the last three weeks we stunk. We routinely turned the ball over in the red zone and dropped way too many big passes all season long.

We're much to good to be the 5th seed.

 

[blackadder]

2006 : 10-6, Division Champs, went to NFCCG
2009 : 13-3, Division Champs, Superbowl Champs
2010 : 11-5, made playoffs, ?

This is a good time to be a Saints fan. I don't get all the negativity and certainly don't see 2010 as a tragedy. After all the losing seasons I suffered through I'm more than happy with the product this staff puts on the field.

Elevated expectations.

It's a good ting as long as you can keep it all in perspective at the end of the season.

Benchmark of success has been raised. No longer just winning season and playoff berth. It's winning the Super Bowl.

Good thing.

Cirticism will only get more and more nitpicky from that perspective, because youo zone in on little things that can cost you a championship.

 

[Nawlins5]

The tragedy is that we still wear those black on black unis. Get rid of those damn things.

 

[blackadder]

I'm not calling our season a tragedy but I'm certainly not especially happy with the teams performance. I think we're a much better team than we showed this year. We absolutely should have won HFA. No two ways about it. No way we should have lost to the Browns and Cardinals. It took a last minute miracles to beat the Cowboys and we barely squeezed one out against Bengals. The first Falcons game was a comedy of errors and we were lucky to get to overtime.

We showed what kind of team we should be against Pitt on Halloween. Two of the last three weeks we stunk. We routinely turned the ball over in the red zone and dropped way too many big passes all season long.

We're much to good to be the 5th seed.

Turnovers, injuries, off year on the OL.

That's why we lost those games, especially Arizona.

I don't feel as bad about Cleveland because they have a very good defense.

They also embarrased the Patriots, as you recall.

If we get everyone healthy, I think they can turn it on in the post season. But the turnovers have to stop and the OL play better. Regardless, we need some to be grooming a replacement for Stinchcomb and some competition for Bushrod.

Drew was harassed too much this year.

 

[AceD]

That whole "just enjoy winning because we sucked for so long" is completely irrelevant. I've been a Saints fan since Fourcade in 87.

We should raise our expectations. We have a HofF QB in his prime. The best offense in the league over 5 years, one of the best defensive coordinators in the league and a underrated, smart, beast of a MLB and defensive Captain. These scenarios are fleeting, it can take decades to get back to something resembling our current situation. Our time is now.

While I'll always love my Saints, there are years where 8-8 makes me proud of the performance and years where I expect much more. I expect to see the best team in the conference in the Super Bowl.

 

[bradman1965]

That whole "just enjoy winning because we sucked for so long" is completely irrelevant. I've been a Saints fan since Fourcade in 87.

We should raise our expectations. We have a HofF QB in his prime. The best offense in the league over 5 years, one of the best defensive coordinators in the league and a underrated, smart, beast of a MLB and defensive Captain. These scenarios are fleeting, it can take decades to get back to something resembling our current situation. Our time is now.

While I'll always love my Saints, there are years where 8-8 makes me proud of the performance and years where I expect much more. I expect to see the best team in the conference in the Super Bowl.

That's not how it works.

Take a look at this thread:
http://www.saintsreport.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2837716

The average Super Bowl winner loses two more games in the following season.

The Saints are alive and in the hunt, but it brings up the fact that Superbowl runs are very, very special and should be savored.

 

[Swimmer]

The tragedy (travesty) of the season so far, which now includes the entire regular season, is that we truly just didn't get to find out how good this team is. Not one game where we truly put our best foot forward and on the pedal all game long. It's really the first time you can say such about a Payton/Brees team, even the years of mediocrity (07-08) produced games where those respective versions of the Saints self actualized for several games.

We got to see hints of it this season- 1st half at Tampa and versus Seattle, 2nd half against Pitt, quarters of outstanding play at Dallas early and St. Louis. But never even close to a full game.

Whatever else happens this season, whether we are good enough to win another SB (I am confident that we are, with points to spare) or consistent enough (from what I have seen this season, without a more balanced offense I am confident we are not), I do want to see the 2010 version of the Saints put it all together, at least once. See what you got, don't leave it to wonder how good your squad truly was for the rest of your careers (as more than a few of these Saints won't be back next year and may never be in such an advantageous position for the rest of their career).

God help the other team if they do manage to bring it.

Even I who likes to stir stuff at times, thinks this is an emotional post. Repeating is brutal. The shorter off season, media demands are absurd. This is the 1st time in 10 years that both teams who played in the SB made it to the playoffs the following year. Our Saints are real good. Maybe not dominant enough to win 3 in a road on the way back to the SB, but this is an elite team.