Well…it’s been one week since Super Bowl XLIV commenced….and the celebration in New Orleans, throughout the state of Louisiana, and all along the diaspora of the Who Dat/We Dat Nation continues unabated. The fact that Mardi Gras/Carnival is already ongoing right now in the Crescent City is just another excuse that Saints fans don’t need…but what better reason to extend the celebration?

And not even a freak snowstorm or unseasonably cold weather could keep the masses from coming out for the festivities…the Championship parade on Tuesday drew an unprecedented 800,000+ visitors to The Big Easy, and backed up traffic so bad in metro NOLA that even Louis Armstrong International Airport had to delay some flights. “It was like a reverse hurricane evacuation..but with everybody coming into the city,” quoted a city official.

And it wasn’t just New Orleans digging in the festivities, either…Baton Rouge is planning a celebration for its own native son hero, Pick-6 hero’legend QB slayer Tracy Porter (who was raised just across the river in Port Allen); my home city of Opelousas is planning a parade and a name change of a street in honor of WR Devery Henderson, another native son who also happened to attend LSU in college.  And don’t get me started about Drew Brees, who has already had the honors of a Disney parade, leading the “Lombardi Gras” parade, getting a call from Prez Obama (who also was smart enough to pick the Saints to win, BTW), and will probably have enough endorsements to set him up for life. (Oh, and he’s supposed to lead the Krewe of Bacchus parade through uptown N’Awlins tonight, too. Try not to throw out your arm, Drew…save some for the repeat.)

Meanwhile, on the flip side of the scoreboard, the Colts were getting what every Super Bowl runnerup/loser usually encounter…especially one whom had been such prohibitive favorites. Amid all the shock and stunned silence of seeing their Super Bowl dreams go fleeting out the windo as fast as Porter completed his 70-yard Pick-6, there were the screams about whether or not Peyton Manning “choked” another one.  (He’s now 9-9 in postseason games, with only the ring he won in SB XLI against Chicago.) There was the crying about the organization’s decision to deliberately rest their players for the final two games rather than go for the perfect 16-0 season.  (They pulled all their starters in the third quarter against the New York Jets, thusly losing that game and the subsequent game against the Buffalo Bills; it almost came back to haunt them when they ended up facing the same Jets in the AFC Championship game.)

Perhaps that shock of losing was responsible for the abysmal turnout for the Colts return to Indianapolis, with no less than 11 — that’s right, ELEVEN – fans meeting the team plane arrival back in Indy.

But even that didn’t compare to the attempts by the more distraught Colts Fan to rationalize away their team’s defeat…mostly by denigrating the Saints’ victory as somehow tainted.

The main focus of Colts Fan’s ire seemed to focus of the gutty and successful decision of Saints head coach Sean Payton to attempt an onsides kick to start the third quarter. Most folks on the outside looking in saw the move as risky, gutsy, ballsy, and typical of the gambling mood of Payton..and its success indicative of how much he trusted both his offense and defense….and how much he wanted to take advantage of an extended halftime show to keep Peyton Manning and the Colt offense off the field and cold.

That’s not how some Colts fans saw it , though.

One crushed fan named Charles Kellett decided that the bad luck of the Colts was not the result of the Saints being the better team, but because the game was…get this…FIXED. By the officials, and by the brass of the NFL. A sample of what Kellett wrote for a blog called The Bleacher Report:

I did not understand that scowl that Peyton Manning had on his face when he walked into the stadium.  I thought maybe he was tired of the cameras in his face, or that it was a put-on, however, in hindsight, I think he was told that the fix was in for the Saints to win.

[...]

The first two receptions by the Colts had a very clear defensive hold and a pass interference.  No Flag was thrown.  I had a bad feeling when I saw that.  Even with the Colts up by ten I knew something was wrong.  A defensive lineman for the Colts (unnamed) twittered after the game that he went to the refs to report that he was being held consistently and the ref would not even make eye contact with him.  ”Usually when I tell the ref that I’m being held he will ask his number.  Tonight I got no response, not even eye contact.  He would not even look at me!  That makes me think.”  A previous post was “I guess America wanted the Saints to win.”  I think the NFL wanted the Saints to win.

The turning point in the game was really the on-side kick to start the second half.  It was not shown during the game, but a day later they released the replay that showed Baskett with both hands on the ball and he and the ball were on the ground in contact with an opposing player.  That is a recovery right there.  Give Peyton the ball at mid-field and that is a guarantee for at least 3.  13-6 or more likely 17-6.  That changes the game big time.

I watch the replays of the Saints highlights and in virtually every one of their big plays there were obvious holding calls that were not made.  Penalties:  Saints 3-19  Colts 5-45.  The Colts had only five in their other two post season games.  I think this is why Tony Dungy retired after the loss to San Diego.  That game was stolen by the officials and this one was to.  NFL politics.  The integrity of the NFL is a really big question to me now.  I have in the past, but this one really was blatant and a lot of people had to know to cover it up.  All the analysts were in too.  The TV people were clearly in to cut away and not show certain replays to cover for what the refs were doing.

Sure. The NFL was soooooo biased against Peyton Manning and the Colts for being 5 point favorites that they deliberately threw the game in favor of the Saints. When most of the analysts were pulling for a Colts-Vikings (or to be more direct, a Peyton Manning/Brett Farve) or a Colts-Cowboys Super Bowl. Of course, that explains why those dirty Saints headhunters were allowed to knock out two Hall-of-Fame QBs (Farve and Arizona’s Curt Warner) and why they got those home cooking calls to defeat Minnesota in the NFC Championship game…never mind seven Viking turnovers and an ill-fated pass across his body to the middle of the field by Farve that Tracy Porter picked off to kill the potential game-winning drive by Minnesota late in the fourth quarter. Never mind that Drew Brees managed to get off eight straight pass completions to open receivers in the drive that gave them the lead in the 4th quarter of the big game…or that Manning threw a hurried pass under fire from a Saints blitz that Porter jumped on and returned back the distance. Naaaaah, the better team just couldn’t have won fair and square….it MUST be a conspiracy!!!

Well…at least Kellett is more of a novice blogger, so his enthusiasm can be excused.

Steve Montana, on the other hand, is a more seasoned commentator, so he has no excuses.

Now, at least Montana is man enough to give the Saints some credit for winning..well “up to a point”. But he sees his conspiracy theory in the onside kick call, which he proclaims to be “dirty pool” and a violation of the quietly assumed “gentleman’s agreement” that the team that loses the coin toss at tha beginning of the game must be allowed to receive the ball to start the second half. A sample of his rant, also posted in The ‘Bleacher Report”:

When the Saints won the coin toss and elected to receive the ball to start the game, they made their choice. The other team gets to receive the ball to start the second half, but the Colts never received the ball. It was stolen from them on a cheap and dirty onside kick.

Although it was a legal play by existing NFL rules, there has always been an unwritten rule, a gentleman’s rule that you do not attempt an onside kick to start a half.

At any other time on a kickoff, fine, but when you win the coin toss, you only get to receive the ball to start a half once. You don’t get to break the rack in nine-ball 2 times in a row.

That would be greedy.

Actually, Stevie…no, it wouldn’t. Just because you elect to receive the ball and force the other team to kick off does not mean that you automatically recieve the bal to run plays from scrimmage.  You still have to receive the kick. And the kicking team reserves to themselves the right to attempt at any time an onside kick to gain possession of the ball; when that happens, it is up to the opposing team to recover the attempt. It isn’t cheating if its perfectly legal.

And besides….the risks involved in attempting an onside kick at that time are enormous enough — giving Peyton Manning and the Colts offense a very short field to work with if the attempt had failed — that most teams would not have done it; but I’m guessing that Payton felt that the benefits of “Ambush”-ing the Colts and getting more time for Brees and the offense, as well as keeping Manning off the field and cold, outweighed the risks enough for him to roll the dice.

The fact that it worked makes him look like a genius in the end, and someone who’s not afraid to risk it all for his team. If it had failed, and the Colts gone on to win, he would have been ripped apart for his decision…but that’s football for ‘ya. Just give him credit for having the cojones to make that call…and credit the Saints O for making his decision count by scoring the touchdown to put them ahead, too.

No fixes. No conspiracies.  The better team won Super Bowl XLIV…and they wore black and gold.

Deal with it, Indy, accept it, and prepare for next year.

Oh…and just in case you can’t get enough of Porter’s Pick-6 clincher, here you go:

Tribute to New Orleans Saints CB Tracy Porter’s 70-yard “Pick 6″ that sealed Super Bowl XLIV (includes both TV call by Jim Nantz/Phil Simms for CBS and radio call from Jim Henderson for NOLA local radio station WWL-AM/Saints Radio Network — via YouTube/CBS)

[Note by Anthony:

Sorry once again for not posting lately...work plus illness has set my blogging back a bit.  I do plan on returning to regularly scheduled smack running as soon as I can, so be patient.

In the meantime, and in preparation for Super Bowl XLIV later this evening, here's a repost of something I wrote last Friday for the Canal Street Chronicles blog, which serves as a fan support blog for the New Orleans Saints, who will be playing the Indianapolis Colts for all the marbles tonight. The Colts have been established as a 6-point favorite by the oddsmakers, and much of the establishment media and sports hacks have given the Saints about as much a chance of winning this as donkeys flying. We'll see what happens for sure, I suppose.].

Why (In My Only Slightly Biased Opinion) The Media Consensus Is Wrong And The Saints Will Win Super Bowl XLIV

If you were to read all the newspapers outside of New Orleans (or Louisiana) and nearly all of the media outlets for the past 2 weeks concerning Sunday’s upcoming Super Bowl XLIV, you’d probably think that the New Orleans Saints were simply the warmup team for the ultimate second coronation of Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts….the NFL’s equivalent of the Washington Generals, to be merely used as fodder for the wizardry of Air “Meadowlark, Son of Archie” Manning, Reggie “Geese” Wayne, Dallas “Marcus Haynes” Clark, and Dwight “Curly the One-and-a-Half-Legged Wonder” Freeney.

You’d think that according to the media consensus, Peyton Manning is simply the most perfect adaptation of “RoboQB” (since the original supposed prototype, Philly’s Randall Cunningham, turned out to be not quite the fit) who will simply slice, dice, and light up the “28th ranked” Saints D like Wyatt Earp mowing down villains at Tombstone; and that New Orleans is simply the luckiest team to even make the finals (their 13-3 record be damned), having been given the right to rep the NFC through the forgiveness of Minnesota, some divine (or, to some conspiracy theorists, very human) help from the officials, and the sheer luck of not facing “America’s Team” (aka Dallas) in the playoffs at all. Only by playing dirty and knocking Peyton Manning out of the game do the Saints have any chance of winning, so the meme goes….and not even the injury to defensive end Dwight Feeney or the lack of a noticeable running game or even taking advantage of having defeated weaker offensives than the Saints will offer (no one would dare to compare Mark Sanchez or Joe Flacco to Drew Brees…but knocking out Kurt Warner and Brett Farve means nothing?

Well…let the media do what they do.  It will make the ultimate New Orleans victory that much sweeter.

I’m not saying that Peyton Manning isn’t an outstanding QB with real weapons in the passing game (Reggie Wayne, Pierre Garcon, Austin Collie, Dallas Clark), or that the Colt D isn’t a better than average D that did do a decent job in shutting down teams that attempted to beat them through power football.

What I am saying, though, is that as good as the Colts are, the Saints can match them…and in some cases, even out do them.

Here’s my reasoning why I do think that the Saints will shock people:

1) Offensive Balance.

If there is one team with one QB that can beat you strictly with passing, it is Indy with Peyton Manning. Problem is, though…there is another team that can beat you with passing too…Drew Brees isn’t exactly a dead arm himself…and he may have even more depth of weapons than even Manning has. Four wideouts (Marques Colston, Devery Henderson, Robert Meachem, and Lance Moore) who can not only beat you on the short and medium pass, but can threaten you deep. Flexibility at the tight end position (Jeremy Shockey eating up the intermediate zones up the middle; David Thomas as an all-around utilitarian player playing every position from traditional TE to H-back to even fullback.) And don’t get me started about Reggie Bush as a threat out of the backfield.

But what the Saints do have that the Colts have not seen from anyone this side of New England is a genuine running attack that balances Brees and the passing game out. The trio of Pierre Thomas/Mike Bell/Lynell Hamilton allow the Saints to play keep away and grind out yards and spin clock when they need to…and while they might not have the power of Shon Greene/Thomas Jones, they certainly can, when they are at their best, keep the other team’s offenses of the field…and set up real opportunities for play action deep passing. (Oh..and did I mention that Reggie Bush fellow, who seems to have found his groove and is actually running out of the backfield with some authority these days??)

Considering that the Colts D is more of a speed based, fly-to-the-football oriented scheme, they could be very much prone to over-pursuit, which plays right into the strength of the Saints offensive line, which happens to include THREE Pro Bowlers, and a battle-tested fourth lineman in Jerome Bushrod. Even WITH a healthy Feeney, Indy would have real issues getting through this line, which has protected Brees outstandingly all year long….save for the Cowboys game, where Demarcus Ware simply ate Bushrod for lunch. If Feeney playes hurt or doesn’t play at all, it becomes nigh impossible without going to blitzing or mind games.

2) A Defense greater than the sum of its parts.

Much has been said about the New Orleans D and their lowly ranking (26th statistically in yardage given up; 26th in passing yardage given up this year) and the huge chunks of points and yardage they gave up to average passers like Jason Campbell, Josh Freeman, and Chris Redman….and the fact that they were basically torched by the combination of Brett Farve and Adrian Peterson in the NFC Championship game.  (Minnesota gained nearly 400 yards of total offense, had a nearly 2-1 advantage in time of possession, and got both 300+ yard passing AND 100+ yard rushing performances.) The basic fact that the Saints were only able as late as the Minnesota game to gain their starting rotation in the secondary back from injuries that handcuffed them in the mid-to-late part of the season (plus the fact that even with all the injuries, breakdowns and collapses, the Saints still managed to go 5-3 whereas last year they probably would have lost all those games….and I probably shouldn’t count the Carolina loss in Week 17 since they rested everybody..or even the Tampa Bay loss because even with Cadillac Williams running free through the Saints D, it still took a Garrett Hartley shank of a chip-shot field goal at the end of regulation to allow the Bucs even the chance of the upset ).

What the haters…..errrrrrrrrr….the skeptics….are missing, however, is that an old John Madden rule of football applies here: if you stop the other team from scoring, and/or take away the ball from them and score yourself, then you can afford to give up huge chunks of real estate in the internim.  Gregg Williams’ defensive scheme is built on the premise of high risk bringing high rewards….that since our O is good enough to score points by the bunches, we can take risks and chances that might give up the bigger plays to go for the rip, strip, scoop, and score…or the Pick 6 that changes the game or gives the O more opportunities to score themselves.  Of course, it does help to be physical and knock the opposing QB’s literally into near retirement…and even gain a reputatiion for being “intimidating”.

Of course, one man’s “intimidating” is another man’s “dirty”, and the rep of the Saints D for allegedly headhunting opposing QBs may backfire on them big time this time, be either alerting the officials to drop the flag quicker or by motivating the Colts offensive line to better defend their franchise. The point of it all is, however, that even RoboQB has to think a bit about the joys of pain from so many hurries and hits after releasing the ball…and you can’t draw a flag if you time your “remember me” taps perfectly. Manning is professional enough and tough enough to endure this, of course, and no one is even implying that he will completely wilter…but all the Saints need to do is to pressure him enough to draw the occasional bad floater or simply wear him down so that his velocity weakens in the 4th quarter. And all it takes for Darren Sharper or Jonathan Vilma or Tracy Porter is one or two mistakes to make Manning pay dearly.

3) Special Teams.

Has anyone managed to notice that Saints punter/kickoff specialist Thomas Moorstead has been booming them of late?? As in, kickoffs deep in the end zone that usually end up as touchbacks, and nice, long, high punts that  usually end up in either fair catches or weak returns?? (OK, I’ll give you the return by Micheal Spurlock that tied the Tampa Bay game, but other than that, especially during the playoffs, he has been spectacular.) It’s much harder to go 80 yards than it is to go 40 for touchdowns in the NFL, even for QB’s as “perfect” as Peyton Manning…and here’s where the Saints running game and their ability to sustain long drives really pays dividends.

And then, there is the deadly combination of Courtney Roby and Pierre Thomas returning kickoffs, and Reggie Bush returning punts. Of course, Reggie can just as likely in the wrong situation blow up in your face, too, as the muff in the Vikings game proved; but he is just as likely to bust at least one or two highlight reel returns.

4) Team chemistry.

Yes, the Colts have been here before.  Yes, they have even won in this very same venue two years ago, and thusly do have an apparent advantage over the Saints, who of course have never been to football’s Promised Land before this year.

On the other hand, though, this team has shown time and time again that they have a real chip on their shoulder that really, really does not like being taken for granted…and all this talk of inevitability of crowning Peyton and the Colts with the crown will more than likely fuel the motivation far beyond the usual hype of a Super Bowl.  Besides, it’s not as if the Saints haven’t tasted victory in Miami, either….they defeated the Dolphins on this very field in Week 3 46-34, where they overcame a 14 point deficit in the 4th quarter and the best efforts of Reggie Brown and former Saint Ricky Williams and the then-vaunted “Wildcat” offense to secure the victory.

5) The Who Dat Nation.

No one doubts the loyalty and dedication of Colts fans. No one should doubt the loyalty and dedication of Saints fans, either.  The difference, however, is that the Who Dats are, shall we say, slightly more jacked up than the usual spicy Creole or Cajun cuisine….and more than likely, more of the latter will be able to make the trip to Miami than will Colts Fan….especially given the weather situation brewing this weekend. Plus….imagine New Orleans Mardi Gras with a world championship. Yeah….forget “off the chain”; they will have to postpone Ash Wednesday for a week. Plus, given all the media undercounting of their team and Roger Goddell’s ill-fated attempt to grind down local merchants with the “Who Dat-gate” copyright infringement fracus, they will have almost as much a chip on their shoulder as the team.

Toi be fair, it is entirely possible that every bit of what I say will be disproven, and Peyton Manning will indeed drive through the Saints D like Sherman through Georgia, and Indy wins in a walkaway.  If so, then props and hail to the champions, and see you next year in Dallas. But remember…they said the same thing about Tom Brady and the seemingly perfect New England Patriots two years ago….and we all know how Tom “Stalag” Coughlin and the New York Football Giants resolved that story. Ask David Tyree the day before the game when his team was considered in very much the same way the Saints are today.

The difference this year is this: the New Orleans Saints have plenty of David Tyrees that can make the clutch play.

My Prediction: New Orleans 38, Indianapolis 27.