Comfortably Delusional

Hey, I’ve been gone a while. I know, I know, it’s just that, y’know, Real Life and all. So what did I miss?

“…”

Oh. Shit. Maybe we should talk about something else. What’s happening besides football?

“Well, Tebow’s gonna sell TiVos now, some very rich British people everyone pretends to care about made a rich fetus everyone’s pretending to care about, and the Pope is twittering now.”

Oh, wow. Football it is then.

I have to be honest. I tried at least three times to write this post. The first three attempts were all realistic and “Wait ’til next year” and “How many loops in a proper belt noose” and stuff. It was pretty dreary. I couldn’t get it to look right, even though there are a lot of things to be positive going into 2013. So I took a step back. I went and looked at what I wrote when we were 0-4 and I was feeling that the end was here.

A miserable read, that was.

“All your reads are –”

Yeah, yeah. My point is: I don’t think anyone comes here for realism. Hell, I don’t even come here for realism. I was lying to myself on those first three tries, because I haven’t given up. I can’t. I’m fucking sick in the head, probably, but I can’t help punishing myself with pointless hope. So that’s what we’re doing here. Welcome to the delusion. I’m not writing positivity and looking at the playoff picture because I don’t understand reality. You must understand that. I’m doing it because I don’t give a fuck about reality. Reality has been no good to me this year. Eat shit, reality. You’re dead to me. If, by any chance, you’re like a realist or you think that your vision of the world should be based on fact and raw probability or any bullshit like that, stop right here. Leave your sanity at the door. I’m talking to you, Ralph.

I should probably comment on the last two games, since I’ve been MIA the entire time. Boy, did that suck or what? Moving on…

“Bullshit.”

Fair enough. Look, as I said back in September, one thing we know about Drew Brees is that he has a tendency to mix his hall-of-fame performances with the occasional rotten fucking egg once or twice three four five six times a year or so. Goddamn, the defense is coming around though, aren’t they? They’re downright Turning The Corner, if my eyes don’t deceive me. (Really, they might be. They’re not, right?)

I’m not going to be the guy who drops a Super Bowl ring into the discussion, or says that Brees can do no wrong because of all he’s done for the city or any garbage like that. I promise. Okay, I did the Super Bowl thing Thursday night. But that’s the last time. To be clear: that shit is purely unacceptable. He’s getting paid too fucking much to outright eliminate us from playoff contention all by himself.

“ZOMG! 100 million for 5 interceptions, that’s like 20 million per interception!!!”

Shut the fuck up. See, that’s where I draw the line. No way any of us saw this coming. I get that. The last two games should have been wins; the defense stepped up and played lights-out, the running game was going whenever someone was told to run, and Drew fucking Brees pissed them both away. Just before Brees did his best Jordan Jefferson impression right before the half, I thought “Man, if the Saints score here, the Falcons will never recover. It’s over.” Of course, the Saints didn’t score there, and it was over. How do you throw the ball inbounds with single-digits on the clock and no timeouts? FUCKING COMPLACENT.  How the fuck do you throw a pick six with less than a minute on the clock in the first half?  What are you, Michael fucking Vick?  Jesus Christ.

But when you start to imply that he’s not worth the money in the long term, you’re fucking complacent, too. Aaron Brooks, asshole. Billy Joe and Billy Joe and Danny Wuerffel and Heath Shuler, so fuck you. Even given the last two performances and this entire shit year, if you have another quarterback you’d take with four games to go and a need to win out to even have a shot at the playoffs, fuck you. We’re not on the same planet, sir or ma’am. We don’t see things the same way.

So we’ll take Drew and move on. We’re done with that nonsense. The Falcons game was the most painful regular season game I can remember, since maybe the missed extra point in Jacksonville. Goddamnit, that game should have been ours. The Falcons continue to have games just handed to them by their competition, and now we’re a part of that overriding shit theme for 2012. Fine. All I have left for 2012 is the dream of a miracle playoff entry and a game in Atlanta. So let’s talk playoffs.

This is where the delusion starts, people. I will now list the things that need to happen to grant the Saints entry into the 2012 postseason. I have chosen to list them in order from most bullshit delusional to least bullshit delusional. Let’s do it.

(1)  The Saints go 9-7.

“Lol! Lol! Lol! Lololololol!!!”

Eat me. The premise is dead without the number-one most delusional piece of the scenario, but I have good news for you folks. If you’re a newcomer to this here blog, you should know right now that The Angry Who Dat Dot Motherfucking Com has the best delusion on the internet. But, really, it’s not completely impossible. We know from the pre-Payton era that no organization does “blow motherfuckers up when it doesn’t matter anymore and it only hurts more to watch a win than a loss because it’s so completely unenjoyable and pointless at this juncture” like the New Orleans Saints.

By the way, if you haven’t noticed, the defense seems to have figured out how to occasionally stop people. Based on the last two game’s statistics, Spags’s crew is actually on pace to not be the worst defense to ever take the field. Who Dat!

(This is where I’d note that the vast improvement over the length of the season from Spags does give us hope for the future, considering that we have a shot to land maybe a couple pass-rushers in the draft or even a safety in free agency or something, and then elaborate on the possible options out there, if this was a wait-til-next-year post, but it isn’t, so that’s that.)

Anyway, if the offense can, you know, stop chucking the ball to the wrong color jersey, and stop doing dumb shit like running out of time at the half, and start finishing drives when they’re moving the ball seemingly at will, there’s not a game remaining that the Saints can’t win. Yeah! We’ll go with that. And we’ll live on the edge every week from here on out. WHAT FUN!

(2)  The 7-5 Seahawks lose two divisional games.

Ouch. This almost made number one. Remaining schedule: ARI, at BUF, SF, STL. The reason I say two divisional games is because in a one-on-one tiebreaker they win the common opponents if one of the losses is against Buffalo (we would tie in conference record). Granted, there are three-way tie scenarios that would negate the conference record AND common opponents (tough to find enough common opponents between three or more teams) and allow the Saints to win on strength of victory. We’ll talk about that when the Saints win the next two and the Seahawks lose to Buffalo. I’m not touching that shit until then.

By the way, the reason this didn’t make number one: the Seahawks are 0-3 against their own division on the road. Plus, they’re now down two cornerbacks, and Carroll has to be scared shitless of handing out the Adderall at the team meetings, right?  #adderallgate  Those fuckers are gonna be so unfocused! Can any of that translate to two losses at home? We’ll just have to wait and see. SO EXCITING!

(3)  The Redskins lose two more games or meet us in a three-way tie.

Obviously we lose this tiebreaker. But they have five games to play, including one against the Giants tonight. If they lose one more within the conference, we should beat them in the common opponents category. We need that three-way tie in that scenario to bypass the head-to-head problem. But we’re getting into realistic territory here, because the Redskins will, indeed, lose two more games (at least). #RGIIIAND2

(4)  The Rams lose a game. DONE.

(5)  The Vikings lose one more game against an NFC opponent.

They can lose to Houston all they want, but it does us zero good unless they also lose to an NFC opponent. They have Chicago and Green Bay at home and St. Louis on the road. That’s a likely scenario. YAY LIKELY SCENARIOS!

And that’s all we need to happen.

“Holy fuck, that’s it?”

Yeah, smartass, that’s it. Tampa and Dallas take care of themselves assuming we beat them both. We win the head-to-head tiebreakers, and we also have them both in the conference opponents tiebreaker if some other asshole team insists on a three-way. There is also one scenario I’ve left out: the Bears shitting the bed completely the rest of the way. I’ll include them next week if necessary.

Oh, one last caveat: if the Saints lose next week and Seattle beats Arizona, not only are the Saints logically eliminated from the playoffs, they’re also mathematically eliminated from every scenario that does not involve at least a three way tie that comes all the way down to strength of victory.

Shit. I’m exhausted. Is it 2013 yet?

Tags: What The Fuck