FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Sports

NFL Dos and Don'ts: New Orleans Saints

The New Orleans Saints finished second in the most garbage division last year. Not great!

As we prepare for another year of NFL football, let's take a look back at the highs and lows from 2014 for each team. Welcome to NFL Dos and Don'ts. If you missed one, you can read all our recaps right here.

Do

I've got to be honest, gang, the NFC South has been a tough slog for these Dos and Don'ts. Last year's division was the oil drum fire in the scene where Frank Stallone sang in Rocky. No team had a winning record, and even though the Saints and Panthers both had seven wins, the Panthers won the division because they had a tie instead of a ninth loss. The 2014 Saints were a No Fear shirt. Had they take a cue from the Colts, the Saints would have hung a "Still Had the Same Number of Wins, Though" banner.

Advertisement

But New Orleans loves their Saints, something that has never been made clearer than with all the retrospectives for Hurricane Katrina's tenth anniversary this month. Coverage of local teams during natural and national disasters can often feel cynical. Perseverance through adversity, individuals coming together for a common goal—these sorts of narratives seem to translate well from sports to the rest of the world. Sports, however, are basically fake, and having your home destroyed by raging waters is very real, so how well does it really translate?

Sports are just an escape from the shit you have to put up with in real life, and nothing makes that more explicit than when real life goes extremely haywire. That's why everyone loves the Saints. They didn't help rebuild the city, they just gave everyone a chance to turn their brains off and recharge for a few hours a week so they could do it themselves. So let's give the Saints an Honorable Mention Do for just being there.

OK, now for the real Do! Drew Brees is a pretty small guy for a quarterback, so out of all the NFL QBs you might think about suplexing, Brees would probably be your best bet. As luck would have it for Vikings cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, such an opportunity presented itself in a Week 3 game at the Superdome. Safety Robert Blanton was also in on the play and he's the reason this is a Do. As soon as Brees got off the ground, he pushed Blanton and ran the safety off the field like an old man chasing a dog off his lawn. You don't have to take that shit, Drew! You're not some tackling dummy waiting to get tossed around. Do show these clowns who's boss and let them know even though you just got dropped on your back, you're ready for all comers.

Advertisement

Don't

With all the romanticizing about the curative nature of sports, we sometimes forget that many sports fans are straight-up assholes. Take this gentleman decked out in head-to-toe Saints gear elbowing a Bengals fan in the face for a souvenir that was clearly intended for her, and her only. Jermaine Gresham caught a touchdown and spotted a woman in a Bengals jersey sitting in the end zone seats and went over to toss the football to her. You can even see him indicate to her that he would be tossing it her way. That didn't matter one goddamn bit to this Saints fan, though.

I just don't see how an adult could be so inconsiderate and so consumed by a cool souvenir that he felt he had to muscle his way past a woman and rip the ball out of her hands. How does that happen? How do you do that? How do you live with yourself the second after you sit down with your new stolen item and not feel like the smallest man in the world?

Dude! Don't!