My friends, we are very close to experiencing something in life that can never ever be duplicated, no not the New Orleans Saints going to the Super Bowl, we’ve experienced that. I’m talking about the complete and total humiliation of the Atlanta Falcon fanbase.
If the Saints face the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl in Atlanta in 2 weeks, it will be potentially the worst experience of Atlanta Falcons fans entire lives. If it happens do Falcons fans…
- Root for the team who stole their hopes and dreams and humiliated them by overcoming a 28-3 lead against the Falcons in the Super Bowl 2 years ago?
- Root for the team they despise and have a 50-year bitter rivalry with so they don’t have to see New England win yet another title, this time in their stadium?
- Root for the end of civilization to come Sopranos style and have everything just go black for all eternity?
Tough choices. I want so badly to see this. I want Falcon fans to suffer the indignity of having their city overrun with Saints and Patriot fans for a week. It would be like their own version of Dante’s new 11th Circle of Hell, except this one involves football.
How fantastic would it be to see Falcons owner Arthur Blank being seen with Gayle Benson and having to pretend like he’s not dying inside as the Saints steal all his shine from his pretty new stadium hosting a Super Bowl? I blew a chef’s kiss just thinking about it.
Mostly I just want the Atlanta to be drenched in Saints fans. And make no mistake, if Saints win Sunday, the caravan from NOLA to Atlanta will make Sherman's March to the Sea look like a family trip to Biloxi.
If the Saints win a Super Bowl in the Falcons stadium, we get to hold that over Atlanta fans for the rest of time. Between the Saints winning a title in Atlanta and the Falcons blowing a 28-3 lead in a Super Bowl, NOLA will assume lifetime ownership of the Atlanta NFL franchise.
This magical confluence of the Saints and Patriots playing a Super Bowl in Atlanta is a one-shot deal, we aren’t ever going to be this close to being able to laugh and stunt all over Falcons fans for an entire week in their city ever again. This is like the Halley’s Comet of humiliation. It must be fulfilled.
Saints Fan Mood and Meditation Music: Let It Happen -- Tame Impala
If you read this column regularly you know I have a weird addiction to finding music I hear in commercials and putting it on my phone. This song is in the latest Ford car commercial you probably saw 4000 times last weekend watching playoff games. The thing is it’s fantastic and ties into what Saints fans need to do Sunday.
“It's always around me, all this noise, but
Not really as loud as the voice saying
Let it happen, let it happen (It's gonna feel so good)
Just let it happen, let it happen"
The Saints are in their third NFC Championship game since 2006. Breathe it in. We may not be around this magic football experience again. Just let it happen…
The Games
Last Week: 0-4
New Orleans (-3) vs Los Angeles Rams: On paper, this doesn’t set up well for the Saints. The Rams star-studded defensive line gets to go against a beat up and injured Saints offensive line. The national media was more consumed this week with talking about how the Eagles lost than the Saints won and seems to badly want to see Sean McVay get to a Super Bowl.
On the surface, the Saints 20 points against the Eagles feeds the narrative the offense and Drew Brees are in some sort of month-long funk. But look a little deeper and you’ll see a Saints offense that thoroughly dominated for 3 quarters. The Saints had 420 yards of offense, 38 minutes of possession, and Drew Brees missed 2 deep throws to open receivers for scores.
The Saints haven’t been great on offense since a Thanksgiving Night game against Atlanta, but I’d argue they were REALLY close to an explosion against Philadelphia. The explosion is coming Sunday.
We haven’t had an ‘OMG Drew Brees is RIDICULOUS’ game in a long time. The Saints got away with a bad start against the Eagles. They will make sure that doesn’t happen again.
You’ve probably read 4000 articles analyzing this game from every angle, but Sunday comes done to one simple thing to me; the Saints aren’t going to let Todd Gurley run on them and they are going to make Jared Goff beat them. I’m betting on the Saints defense and crowd noise to be up to the challenge.
The experts expect a close game, I expect a party. Drew and the defense are taking everyone to Atlanta.
Saints 45-17
New England (+3.5) at Kansas City: As I said above, I’ll be rooting for the Patriots. Every stat says New England is terrible on the road (they got housed by Jacksonville AND Tennessee in the regular season), and the Chiefs have too much speed on offense and pass rush on defense -- I’m taking Tom Brady anyway. We think the Saints being in a third NFC Championship Game since ’06 is magical, the Patriots have made EIGHT STRAIGHT AFC Championship Games. How is that even real?
Patriots 38-31
Ralph Malbrough is a Saints fan living in Houston. Email him at saintshappyhour@gmail.com, find him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SaintsForecast or download his podcast at Itunes.