The Atlanta Game

This is the first post on this blog. Nobody'll probably read this thing anyway but i had the idea to do it after looking at a teacher of mine's blog. And seeing as my chief interest, besides music which i do everyday, I decided to do something about the Saints. So here goes. If anybody reads this, I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing it.

We recently played a game in Atlanta against the much hated Falcons. Now, they're not a very good team and not someone you shudder at when you see their name on the schedule. In fact, if you're a professional football player in the NFL this season, you probably smile when you see their name. But anyway, the scenario is now that we have to treat every game like the playoffs. We can't afford to lose another game because if we do we're going to almost for sure lose our shot at the playoffs. Now, we're gonna need some help from other teams to get there, but if we win out we should get in. All the outside help we need is for Minnesota to lose on of the last three games. And so the first of four must win games was at Atlanta on Monday Night Football. No better place to make a statement to the rest of the NFC.


The game didn't start out very well for either team. We traded punts with the Falcons in the early going and really didn't move the ball too well. We faced an early fourth and short and decided to go for it, but we ended up not getting it on a Mike Karney run up the gut. But one thing I loved was the call Coach Payton made early in the game. We all know about the reverse against Tampa Bay that lost us the game. So you would think that he would stay away from being so aggressive. wrong. On the first possession of the game, he called a reverse and guess what?? It went for 15 yards. Thats what i love about our offense. We're aggressive no matter waht and i like that. That makes us a dangerous football team and I think we need to have that attitude.


Then Atlanta put us on our 1 yard line and that proved to be a costly mistake. It was like our offense just decided that they weren't gonna be disrespected like that. They drove 99 yards down the field for the first TD of the game to David Patten. Then the Falcons responded with a quick strike of their own. After that, it was almost all Saints. Drew Brees went on to throw two more TD's to Marques Colston and would've had four if not for an Eric Johnson drop in the endzone. Patten finished with 120 yards and Colston continued to be one of the hottest receivers in the league finishing with 92 yards and two scores. Aaron Stecker provided the much needed balance on offense by finishing with 100 yards on 20 carries. The line created a perfect pocket almost all night for Drew and opened up huge holes for Steck to run through. At the end of the day it was one of the most complete offensive games of the season.

The defense fared almost as well. For a defense that's been victimized by the pass all year, they had a good outing this week. The Saints racked up 3 sacks on Atlanta's Redman, who is a pretty tough guy to sack because he has such a quick release). They pressured him all night long and made it hard for him to sit in the pocket and make his reads. Our defense tackled really well today and really swarmed to the ball all night long. Roman Harper nabbed his second INT of the year and took it back for a TD for the first time in his two year career. His score put us ahead for good and made it impossible for an Atlanta comeback. As usual, the run defense was unbeatable holding all their backs for a combined yardage of under 45. thats combined guys. Pretty incredible if you ask me. We did play some sloppy ball on special teams, with Usama Young running into Lance Moore and Moore fumbling a return away leading to an Atlanta score. Other than that we played a perfect game with few penalties.

All in all it was a great game and now we just need to defend the home turf against the Cards and Eagles in the next two games. Some pretty good stats to focus on. The Saints have been a team of streaks and this might be another one. We're 3-0 against teams with bird mascots (falcons twice, seahawks once). So we should do alright against a pretty weak Arizona team. I know all the whodats will be in the dome cheering em on and i'll be there in two weeks against the Eagles. So lets keep being the best fans in football.

WHO DAT!!!