The Saints are doing their best impression of a dilapidated, broken, shattered, corpse trying to crawl its way across the finish line. Last weeks effort was painful to watch, and embarrassing to behold. However, while the Saints were officially eliminated from the playoffs for the 3rd year in a row that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to play for, and certainly doesn’t mean there is nothing worth watching for us fans. Below is a short list of reasons you really don’t want to miss the Saints final 3 games of the season.
1: Everyone loves to watch a tragedy
If there is one thing the popularity of shows like the Kardashians and Jerry Springer has taught us is that we as a people LOVE to enjoy watching people who make us feel better about ourselves. Meet your 2016 New Orleans Saints folks, because throughout this season the Saints have done a wonderful impression of the hapless Washington Generals. We don’t know how the Saints will lose, maybe its in a blow out, maybe its a blocked kick, or maybe the defense regresses back to the mean and they lose in an epic shootout. Either way we are pretty sure the Saints are going to find a way to lose in spectacular fashion.
2: THEY still have something to play for
All snarky remarks aside the Saints are a team in transition and they still have a lot to play for. They are nowhere near the team we would like them to be, but if the final 3 weeks can go a long way towards helping them get there. It’s not really about the wins and losses (honestly I hope we lose each game at the buzzer to get a better pick), it’s about the experience. Players like Stephone Anthony, Daniel Lasco, Andrus Peat, and Vonn Bell will find these final 3 games as being precious because they are going to be given every opportunity to demonstrate why they are part of the team’s future. Nick Underhill of The Advocate wrote an interesting article yesterday about how even Sean Payton acknowledges that Anthony still struggles with play diagnosis, and if coaching and film study can’t fix that…then the only option left is play him and see if he can grow.
3: They aren’t playing good teams
The Saints will be playing the Arizona Cardinals, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Atlanta Falcons. None of these are particularly good teams, and all of them have the potential to be a very entertaining game from a fans perspective. In particular the Bucs at home and the Falcons could be games where the Saints put up a lot of points and we get to enjoy a good show, win or lose. It is of course also possible the Saints look abysmal all three games as they enter full tank mode, but even that has its own sort of morbid amusement (and also may lead to the firing of some current Saints employees we all would like to see gone).
4: We have a chance to ruin everything for the Falcons
Whether they have the division won by week 17 or not, the fact remains that the Saints have the opportunity to ensure that the very last regular season game played in the Georgia Dome EVER, was a Falcons loss at the hands of the Saints. If I can pick a perfect end to the Season its for the Saints to only win one more game (which if you ask draft twitter is the best thing to do), but they win the final game in Atlanta before the Falcons move over to the….yea….’starfish’. Anytime we as Saints fans can enjoy the misery of the Falcons its a good day, and being able to say that till the end of time the final game in the Falcons home stadium was a loss to the Saints would damn near make the misery of this season worth it.
5: We just might have a defense
We seem to have entered this weird twilight realm where the Saints offense is mediocre and our defense is really solid. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues through the last 3 weeks because I have no doubt in my mind that Sean can fix the offense. If by some miracle we’ve finally started to build a defense that is not terrible, this whole season was worth it. I for one want to see if the Saints young defense can continue to fight and make plays.
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