Good morning. It has been exactly three weeks since my last blogpost, and, my goodness, a lot has happened in the world of sports since then. Brett Favre ended his record streak of starts at 298, started a week later, got hurt again, and is likely on his way to an actual retirement. The Yankees retained shortstop and team captain Derek Jeter, the Phillies snagged pitching prize Cliff Lee (giving them a mind-boggling rotation of Roy Halladay, Lee, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels), the Red Sox got Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, the two best position players on the free-agent market, while the Yankees have made no significant acquisitions. The overhyped, over-rated Cincinnati Bengals won a game. Tim Tebow has had some significant touchdown runs as an NFL QB. Cam Newton won the Heisman Trophy. The 'overrated' Miami Heat have turned into one of the NBA's best teams, at one point winning 12 games in a row and, on Christmas Day, embarrassing the Los Angeles Lakers, 86-70, on their home court.
The reason for this post was a match-up for the ages on the last Monday Night Football of the 2010 season. The defending-champion New Orleans Saints (10-4 entering the game, following a Week 15 loss to the Baltimore Ravens) visited their division leaders, the #1 team in the NFC, the Atlanta Falcons (12-2 entering the game), for an encore of a Week 3 matchup in which Atlanta prevailed. Since then, the Falcons, star running back Michael Turner, star wide receiver Roddy White, and, especially, star QB Matt Ryan ("Matty Ice") have been hailed as some of the best offensive players in the game.
Somebody forgot to tell the Saints about the best offensive players in the game thing. All three major Atlanta weapons were smothered by the Who Dat defense, and the Saints, led by Super Bowl 44 MVP QB Drew Brees, overcame a fourth-quarter deficit to win 17-14 in front of some 60,000 Atlanta fans to clinch an automatic playoff berth.
Even after the Falcons' loss (and a number of Saints players rubbed salt in the wound by posing for a picture on the Falcon emblem at midfield after the game), the road to the Super Bowl in Dallas still goes through the Georgia Dome, as the now 12-3 Falcons are still the top team in their conference, but now just a game over the Saints. They also still hold possession of the division title the Saints hope to snag. But, in this game, the Falcons, who have been the best team that doesn't have a guy named Tom Brady all year, and were getting their first major exposure as a serious contender, stumbled.
Turner had 17 carries, and 27 of his 48 total yards came on one run. Otherwise, he was usually grabbed around the legs or ankles within a few steps of the handoff. White, who was usually well-covered by a speedy Saints' secondary best known for taking some of the punch out of Peyton Manning's passing game in the Super Bowl, had 43 yards on three catches, one of them for 18. And Matty Ice, easily one of the NFL's best quarterbacks in a year that has had many a great performance from the guys under center (Brady, Vick, Rodgers, Kitna...) was subpar, completing just 15 of 29 passes for 148 yards and one TD, an average of 5.1 yards per pass.
Another big problem was that, while the Falcons sent a lot of men after the Saints' best player, Brees, and even sacked him once, the star signal-caller ducked, side-stepped and spun away from tacklers multiple times, often completing first down passes shortly afterward. True, Brees proved mortal in a five-minute fourth quarter span in which he threw two interceptions, one of them returned 26 yards for a touchdown by Atlanta defender Chauncey Davis. While the other was a brilliant defensive play by Jonathan Abraham, who rushed Brees, in space, deflected the pass into the air and caught it himself, the first was all Brees' mistake. While being sacked, Brees made a backhanded flip in the general direction of RB Reggie Bush, but Davis stepped in the way, and caught the ball like a gift, with a wide open lane to the end zone in front of him.
The Saints took a 10-0 lead early in the game, with kicker Garrett Hartley nailing a 52-yard field goal in the first quarter, and RB Pierre Thomas scooted into the end zone for a 2-yard score early in the second. The latter was set up by a botched snap from Atlanta center Todd McClure, which became a fumble recovered by New Orleans. Not long after, though, Matty Ice hit White for a 7-yard score that made it 10-7 at halftime. After a scoreless third quarter, Davis made the big pick six that brought it to 14-10, and the Saints did nothing on their next possession, and so this columnist went to bed. I didn't figure that the Falcons, at home, with their fabled ice-in-his-veins quarterback would lose, but it turns out Brees had some stone-hardness about him, too. Brees led the Saints 90 yards for the go-ahead touchdown (a 6-yard pass to Jimmy Graham with 3:24 left), and the defense held off Atlanta for the win.
"It feels good," Brees said afterward. "You just want to punch your ticket to the big show, and we've done that."
He also commented on how Atlanta's only hurdle left for clinching the #1 seed is beating two-win Carolina next week.
Ryan, though, didn't mention that upcoming predicted-win in his post-game comments. "We don't want to feel this way the rest of the season. We're going to work hard to make sure we don't."
"In the end," Brees said, "we found a way to win."
The Saints play the 9-6 Tampa Bay Buccaneers next week for their regular season finale.
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