Unlike Last Few Seasons, These Saints are Different
By Bob Rose
Nov 13, 2016; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) talks to wide receiver Brandin Cooks (10) after his fourth quarter touchdown catch against the Denver Broncos at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. The Broncos won, 25-23. Mandatory Credit: Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports
For the 3rd straight year in a row, the New Orleans Saints find themselves with a 4-5 record; with 7 games to go. In 2014 and 2015, the Saints would go on to lose the next few games each time, and miss the NFL Playoffs as a result.
But there’s something that just ‘feels’ different about this 2016 team. Call it a maturation process, or finally “turning the corner” if you’d like, but this Saints team is NOT the same Saints team that we’ve seen stumble badly in the 2nd half of the season for the last two years.
Now let’s be completely honest: the Saints are now currently in their 50th year of professional football, and during that time they have suffered more soul crushing losses than perhaps any other franchise.
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Most long time Saints fans would probably agree that recounting or recollecting these losses are a list that belongs in a book with multiple chapters, rather than a mere article or two.
Any non-Saints fan is more likely to think that yes, many of these losses were a bit unusual in nature, but the majority of them were in games that were not high profile and just the result of a sometimes cursed franchise that has mostly toiled in obscurity throughout its existence.
The true “Who Dat Nation” knows better; that it was precisely those types of inexplicable and at times COMPLETELY UNBELIVABLE losses that prevented this team from being relevant in Playoff or Super Bowl contending conversation.
This past Sunday’s loss to the Denver Broncos is most definitely an added chapter to this book. One that seems too unbelievable to actually be true, yet one which the mere mention of causes a fan’s face to distort in unspeakable ways.
This sort of loss has been known to completely derail a team’s season, or cause a young teams progress to spiral backwards into mediocrity.
Yet, let’s take a close look at this season’s particular version of the New Orleans Saints, and a few reasons why this team is DIFFERENT from some we’ve seen in the past — specifically different even than the one that we’ve seen the last two seasons.
Starting first with this one……