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Mar 2012

Dammnit, Payton!!!!! Dammit, Goodell!!!!

The author of this commentary is SPOT on and expresses EXACTLY how I feel! DAMMNIT!!!!!

Forecast: Anger over Saints situation should be focused on Payton, Goodell
wwltv.com
Posted on March 23, 2012 at 2:47 PM

Ralph Malbrough / Contributing Writer

I can sum up how I feel about bounty fest in one simple sentence; It’s made me so mad I want to rail at someone for ruining the best Sundays in the fall I’ve ever had but I’m not sure who deserves it more.

Sean Payton is a great candidate to focus some anger on. The arrogance, which helped him win a Super Bowl, just might burn his coaching career to the ground. How delusional and reckless was Payton? He went full Richard Nixon Watergate cover-up mode on something the NFL would have treated as minor traffic violaton if he’d have just come clean after the 2010 season.

Roger Goodell, if the Saints had admitted the bounties existed after the 2010 season, probably would have taken a 2nd round draft pick and maybe suspended Payton a couple games.

Bad? Definitely. The NFL still would have made a huge deal of it to do the whole, “We take player safety very seriously” song and dance but it wouldn’t have been the circus it is now. Congratulations Sean, you turned a routine traffic stop for a minor violation into a car chase involving the entire police department, TV station helicopters, and CBS breaking into the Bold and the Beautiful to cover it live. Well done.

If you are wondering if I have anger towards Mickey Loomis, I do but Sean Payton runs the Saints and if he wanted the bounties stopped they would have been. If he had told Joe Vitt to come clean to Goodell it would have been done. Hey Sean, you must have missed every political scandal of the last 30 years to think YOU could pull off lying and keep everything in the closet away from the light of day.

Jan 2012

Saints 45, Panthers 17

By L. Kupfer

Saints finish undefeated at home (8-0) for the first time in team history and tie their best overall record at 13-3

Brees passed for 389 yards and five touchdowns, and the New Orleans Saints set a slew of NFL and club records in a 45-17 blowout of the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

The NFL single-season records set by the Saints (13-3), who head into the playoffs on an eight-game winning streak, included offensive yards with 7,474, team yards passing with 5,347 and first downs with 416.

Brees, who was 28 of 35, finished with a record 468 completions this season, breaking Peyton Manning’s 2010 mark of 450. He finished the season completing 71.6 percent of his passes, breaking his own 2009 NFL record 70.6 completion percentage.

Jimmy Graham had 97 yards receiving to finish with 1,310, exceeding Kellen Winslow’s 1980 record for a tight end. But New England’s Rob Gronkowski finished with 1,327 yards, establishing a new mark.

Darren Sproles had 40 yards rushing, 29 yards receiving and 99 yards on kickoff and punt returns to finish with season with an NFL record 2,969 combined yards, easily breaking the previous mark of 2,690, set by Derrick Mason with Tennessee in 2000.

Marques Colston caught Brees’ first two scoring passes, making a spectacular, spinning catch with arms outstretched on the first one from 15 yards out.

Colston’s second touchdown went for 42 yards, and he finished with seven catches for 145 yards. He broke the 1,000-yard mark for the fifth time in his six pro seasons.

Brees also connected with Graham on a 19-yard scoring strike, and added TD passes of 9 yards to Darren Sproles and 1 yard to fullback Jed Collins.

Graham’s TD catch was his 11th, matching a club record also reached by Joe Horn in 2004 and Colston in 2007.

Brees surpassed 300 yards passing for the seventh straight game and 13th time this season, both NFL records he already held and simply extended.

The records come one week after Brees passed Dan Marino’s 27-yard-old single-season record of 5,084 yards passing.

Brees finished the season with 5,476 yards to go with 46 touchdown passes

Although San Francisco’s lopsided victory means the Saints could not improve their No. 3 seeding in the NFC playoffs, coach Sean Payton had said during the past week that he wanted his team to continue building on the torrid pace it established during its second-half winning streak. He was true to his word, with aggressive play calling that produced a franchise record 617 yards of total offense. It was the 13th 400-yard game for the Saints this season.

With six touchdowns against Carolina, the Saints finished with 66 this season breaking the 2009 record of 64.

The Saints had 360 yards of total offense in the first half, when they easily blew past the Rams’ 2000 yardage mark.