Saints Report # 15 - December 27, 2015

The New Orleans Saints began their playoff run and march to the Super Bowl with a 38 – 27 spanking of the Jacksonville Jaguars in the Superdome on Sunday.  Next up are the Atlanta Falcons whom they should handle handily, and they’ll be back in the Superbowl.

That, ladies and gentlemen is what we call fantasy football.

Back on planet earth, Drew Brees mimicked Superman with one of his near-perfect games.  Just when you thought he might sit down for the year due to an injured foot, he rattles the dome with 412 passing yards, and staked the Saints to a 24-0 lead.  He now has 4546 yards passing for the year, and with one game to go would surely be staring at another 5000 yard season had he not missed a game.  All the more remarkable in that Marques Colston was inactive due to injury, and Ben Watson was hobbled.  He got support from Brandin Cooks, who had a big game while going over 1100 yards receiving for the year, and Tim Hightower, who broke the 100 yard rushing mark, the rarest of achievements in this offense.  Hightower fortunately looks more like Pierre Thomas than Mark Ingram and hopefully management is noticing.  Traveris Cadet, back with the Saints this week, got action over CJ Spiller, whom it looks like Payton has sat down for the year.  Spiller apparently has never fully recovered from knee surgery, which is a condition I fully understand. 

The defense played well at times, with Delvin Breaux standing out, but they still set an NFL record for touchdown passes allowed with 43.  With one game to go, they may set a record that can never be broken.

For the Jaguars, they couldn’t even induce a penalty out of Brandon Browner, although they did beat him with a bomb.  Bombed and booed, Brandon Browner looks bamboozled.  Bummer.

So with only the Falcons left, who got Mercury Morris drunk again when they upset Carolina, the Saints look to the future.  Rumors are rampant about Payton and Brees, while idiots in the media implore Tom Benson to sell his teams.  Hey, Tom, please dump your $2 billion worth of businesses because I said so. 

Try Craig’s List.

See you in Atlanta for the Fed-Ex Going Nowhere Bowl.  It will be the official start of the wait til next year.

Saints Report # 14 - December 21, 2015

Are you ready for some football?

Well - you're going to have to wait.

The New Orleans Saints began to apply the finishing flourishes to their season of mediocrity on Monday night by taking it on the chin from a team thought to be more hapless than them.  Nope, the Detroit Lions beat the tar out of the defenseless Saints 35-27 and it wasn’t that close.  Only a dramatic late comeback led by a hobbled Drew Brees made it seem close. 

The Saints found new ways to lose.  They spotted the Lions a 28-3 lead by playing a first half of defense that can only be described as token.  The end result was something they had never done in the BP era – they lost a game when they didn’t commit a turnover.  Previously they had been 30 – 0.  Is this rock bottom?   Maybe their previous record of invincibility in nationally televised night games evaporating is rock bottom. 

Brees tore his plantar fascia during the second half and should close out the year on injured reserve.  Rookie Garret Grayson should be allowed to gain valuable experience by starting the last 2 games.

Forgetaboutit.

That’s not the way the Saints operate.  It would be logical.

And that’s all you need to know. 

 

Saints Report # 13 - December 13, 2015

Saints fans are still waiting for his first end zone dance.

But he won’t dance.  Don’t ask him.

Marques Colston caught 2 touchdown passes from Drew Brees in the Saints surprising 24-17 victory in Tampa.  It brought to 71 the number of times they have combined for a touchdown.  That puts them 5th all-time.

Drew Brees threw his 421^st career touchdown pass, as he moved into 4^th place on the all time list, with only Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Brett Favre ahead of him.  It’s impressive company and the headlines will say that Brees led the Saints to a workmanlike win.  Another story will be on Tim Hightower who came out of retirement this year and looked better than a lot of higher priced running backs the Saints have on their roster, and there’s no reason to beat that horse any deader than it already is.

The defense played easily their best game of the year by rendering Jameis Winston ineffective and holding Brandon Browner to only one penalty, although Kyle Wilson tried to step into the penalty role with three.

But, my focus is on the Quiet Storm. 

Colston came out of Hofstra and the Saints saw something they liked and picked him in the 7^th round of the 2006 draft.  His chemistry was immediate with Brees and for 10 years they’ve been the Saints most reliable combo.

No one could have forseen what Colston would mean to the team and its fans. 

He is now the Saints all-time leader in touchdowns, receiving yards, and receptions.   

He’s in the twilight of his career now, as he approaches the 10,000 yard mark.  This year there have been more drops than usual, but as the season progressed it seems that he has taken a few sips from the fountain of youth.  Brees is looking for him in the clutch again, and he has responded with several critical catches, just as he did on a 3^rd and 11 Sunday.  He famously sleeps in a hyperbolic chamber to take care of this body, and Sean Payton gives him a day off now and then from practice to heal. 

Colston has made his living roaming the middle of the field, taking shots and fighting for yardage after a catch in heavy traffic.  A drop now and then is understandable.  Name another receiver like him who has lasted this long while jumping up exposed to catch a ball in the seam. 

Here are the quarterback/receiver combinations just ahead:

Peyton Manning to Marvin Harrison 112

Steve Young to Jerry Rice 85

Dan Marino to Mark Clayton 79

Phillip Rivers to Antonio Gates 73

There you have something to root for in a lost season.  Sure, the Saints could win out and finish 8 – 8, and technically they haven’t been eliminated.  I’ll be rooting for The Quiet Storm to finish strong and maybe squeeze one more year out of his aching body.

There’s an old saying that I really like.  It is “when you get in the end zone act like you’ve been there before.”  That’s been a habit of Colston’s since day one.

Unselfish. Unrecognized, unflappable, underappreciated.  He has done everything you could ask a receiver to do.

Except dance. 

He's been in the end zone before, and he'll be there again, giving the Saints a touch of class on and off the field.  #12 - the Saints all-time leading receiver.

Saints Report # 12 - December 6, 2015

One of the arguments for gun control is that there are an excessive number of accidental shootings.  Anyone who has watched the Saints shoot themselves in the foot time after time this year already knows that.  Principal shooters are usually Brandon Browner and men in striped shirts. 

The Saints fell to 4-8 Sunday with their 41- 38 loss to the undefeated Carolina Panthers.  Given the Saints roster failures, can there be a scarier development than the Saints playing so poorly that they will have a high draft choice? 

Sunday the Saints started with the momentum they were going to need if they wanted to pull an upset.  They had an early 7 – 0 lead after a nice drive.  Rookie Delvin Breaux swiped a pass, and Rookie Stephon Anthony swiped a ball and ran it in, and they were up 14-0. 

The Saints however were up to the foot-shooting challenge, as Kenny Vaccaro was cocky enough to taunt the Panthers after another great Breaux play.  Carolina got their momentum back, aided by a long 4^th down run by Newton, which the Saints oddly never saw coming, as they offered no containment, a concept that has been foreign to the young Saints.

With three first half take-aways the Saints were primed to take a big lead, but the offense stalled.  Then in the second half, the offense rolled, but the defense couldn’t tackle or cover.  It’s conceivable that no defense has ever played worse than this team's. 

A pass rush can conceal a variety of ills. 

There’s no pass rush, so there’s no way around it.

The Saints secondary is a mess.

Keenan Lewis’s season is over after hip surgery.  He was the best defensive back.

Delvin Breaux exited the game with a leg injury after making several good plays.

Damian Swann, who has shown great promise, can’t get back on the field after 2 concussions.

Jabari Greer is retired.

Malcolm Jenkins is running back interceptions for the Eagles.

Johnny Poe is long gone

Tommy Myers is not interested.

Dave Waymer is deceased.

Jason David is banished.

Which leaves the Saints with Brandon Browner, who fires more shots than any other, and Jarius Byrd who disappears.

The Saints play a man to man defense with a single safety.  It’s an odd choice for a team that can’t cover anyone one on one.  The Panthers, not known for their receivers, embarrassed the coverage.

It was so obvious as the game developed.  Brees is throwing into tight coverage, often double.  After attending the game, I watched it again at home just to be sure about this – but the Panthers threw 8 passes to receivers who were wide open – no one even close.  Fortunately, Newton missed some of them, or the score would have been in the 60’s. 

Meanwhile the Saints execution failed at key times.  I counted 3 drops, but none more important than Brandon Coleman’s on the next to last play of the game, which could have gotten the Saints in position for a long field goal attempt to tie.  It wasn’t a perfect pass, but catchable.  Unless you’re afflicting more wounds.

So, the Saints would now have to win out just to finish at .500, and that’s not going to happen.

When’s the draft?

The Saints have to face their many organizational deficiencies and roster mistakes that have put them in a salary cap hole that is going to take more than this year to dig out of. 

Here’s reality:

Carolina has won the division 3 years in a row, a feat that seemed impossible just a few years ago, and Cam is there for 10 more years.

Tampa Bay is 6 – 6 and has Jameis Winston whom we will be looking at probably for the next 15 years.

Atlanta is 6 – 6 and Matt Ryan will be around for 6 more years.

Meanwhile Drew Brees has probably 2 years left and is taking a beating, as he nears 37.

I’m scared that they will trade him to a team that seems to be only a QB away, like the Rams.  If the Rams are looking to make a big splash with a move to LA, it would be a perfect fit.  

Watch for them to make an offer. 

It’s the Ralph Kiner principle.  In the mid 50’s the Pittsburgh Pirates were awful.  They had one star, home run hitter Ralph Kiner, who they famously dispatched in a hugely unpopular trade, telling him, “We finished in last place with you, we can finish in last place without you.

It was years before the Pirates recovered.

I’m holding my breath, listening for a last gunshot. 

At the Cinema - November 2015

Spectre – 8

James Bond has become a measure of time, and I’ve been married for 11 installments.  We’ve seen them all.  You can usually count on some good stunts, a ridiculous story, a couple of Bond girls, at least one martini, and an ending whereby the world has been saved again, all in a movie that goes on about a half hour too long. 

One other thing you can count on with the current Bond, Daniel Craig.  He is the most clean shaven dude in the history of cinema.  A que ball would be jealous.  He looks like he has had every facial hair surgically removed.  A five o’clock shadow must be a matter of national security.  I found myself saying throughout the movie, “man, did he shave again?”  Of course, when I go to a George Clooney movie I enjoy watching his stubble change from scene to scene.  So, there’s that.

Spectre delivers on the tried and true 24 picture formula.  After the heaviness of Skyfall, which I did not terribly enjoy, I was not expecting much from 2^nd time director Sam Mendes.  In fact my thinking was that with the additional seriousness of Skyfall, there was nowhere to go, from a story telling standpoint.  Bond’s past had been revealed, dissected, and resolved, so now what?

Well, spoiler alert – what’s love got to do with it?  Yes it had appeared that Bond had done some serious relationship time in the past, but leave it to Mendes and Craig to surprise me.

The villain here is played by Quentin Tarantino go-to baddie Christoph Waltz who is as convincing as he is conniving.  The Bond Girl here is played by Lea Seydoux and she brings something extra to the role, and I’m not the only one that noticed – Bond notices too, and when the damsel is in distress, Bond ramps up his intensity.  Maybe that’s why he keeps shaving.  So, in a plot that is almost identical to Mission Impossible 5, it’s soon them against the espionage world, and the world doesn’t stand any more of a chance than stubble would.

Truth – 8

This is an often fascinating portrait of CBS 60 minutes producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather, the team that tried to tell the story of George Bush’s alledged AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard.  Mapes was fresh off breaking the atrocities of Abu Ghrabi, so she was a hot journalist looking for her next Pulitzer.

There’s a 2 part allegation here.  The first is that Bush got preferential treatment in being allowed to enroll in the Texas Air National Guard rather than be subject to the draft and a Vietnam tour. 

The second is much worse.  It alleged he went AWOL for a long period.   The second part falls apart under scrutiny after Rather breaks it on the evening news.  The shaky nature of the research eventually costs Mapes her job, and Rather is soon ousted from CBS after a long and distinguished career. 

The movie tries to be a great journalism expose like All the President’s Men, but it falls well short of that masterpiece.  The movie leaves you with the impression that Bush probably did something wrong, but we didn’t really know what.  It’s an interesting part of American history that doesn’t get solved here, probably because only one man knows the truth, and he’s not about to talk about it.

On a personal note, I was never a Dan Rather fan until about a month ago, when I discovered his show on AXS (Mark Cuban’s channel – 340 on Directv.)  It’s called The Big Interview, and he does 1 hour sessions with a wide variety of famous people like Carlos Santana and Aaron Sorkin.  He asks the questions I would ask, so naturally I like it.  Certainly a better way to go into the sunset than his expulsion from CBS.

The Hunger Games – Mockingjay part 2 - 3

Finally, it’s over.  In a finale that is as excruciating as having your wisdom teeth put back in, just so you can have them pulled again, the 9 lives of Katniss Everdeen comes to a merciful end.  I will, and I suggest you do as well, equate the 8 hours or so that you may have invested in the Hunger Game series as just a day at the office, one that went from bad to worse, and by the end of the day you were ready for several of James Bond’s martinis.  Just one of those horrible work days that will fade from memory, after it sits in the pit of your stomach for a few days.

The series, which was mildly interesting at first, jumped the moat when the money grubbers decided to split the finale into 2 parts, effectively stretching one movie into two so that they could dip into the wallets, well mostly purses, of the gullible public just one extra time and enhance the stock price of whatever studio funded this repetitive repetition.

Even Jennifer Lawrence, who became a star over the course of the series, looks bored by the elongated end.  She should get not an Oscar for this, but some kind of lifetime achievement medal of honor, for giving so much time and effort.  And poor Phillip Seymour Hoffman.  He’s still appears in this blotation device, even though he’s been dead for years. 

So, what’s so bad about this installment?  First, the ending of the movie is obvious in the first five minutes.  If you don’t see the ending arrow coming a mile away, well you don’t get out much.  Secondly, halfway through the movie, a new species (I think – it all kind of runs together) is revealed, turning it into a horror movie.  It’s like we were suddenly transported into a different movie, Night of the Living Halloween Evil Dead.  I wanted to run for my life, into another movie, any movie.  The only thing like it I’ve ever seen was when the Ark of the Covenant was opened in Raiders of the Lost Ark and it suddenly became a supernatural movie.  Not that I’m comparing this to Raiders, oh no.

Now I was assured by a woman of the female persuasion that the book was great, and I’m sure it was.  But I’ve never cared a whit about how a book compares to a movie, and all I can say is I’m glad it’s all over.  Hats off to a terrific cast that performed diligently as the script(s) unraveled.  Now let’s go to the dentist for some real fun.

Brooklyn – 9

Movies are best when they do just a few things well.  Transport you to a different time and place, tell a simple story well, and stay on the appropriate pace.  Check, check, and check on this beautifully crafted story of an Irish immigrant in the 1950’s who has a job waiting in Brooklyn.

In a time when immigration is a most volatile word, we sometimes forget the simple reason our great nation was built with immigrants.  They wanted to leave where they were and come to America for a better life.  That was the goal.  Just a better life.

Eilis Lacey, played impeccably by Saoirse Ronan, (and the whole cast is perfect) is a young girl who will find love as she comes out of her shy, homesick shell while she adjusts to her new home.  The conflict will be when she has to return home for family reasons.  Does she commit to her new life in America, or retreat to the comforts of home?  This is a gentle movie, a real movie that bears no resemblance to the video game clones in the other stalls of the Cineplex.  My suggestion would be to go see this on throw-back Thursday.  That would be perfect.  It will return you to a simpler time, when immigrants believed the inscription on the Statue of Liberty was sincere, and movie makers believed you could tell a good story without computer assistance.