This last podcast was a Twin Classic. With the Saints playoff loss to the Buccaneers still fresh in his system, it was eating him like a bad infection that went unchecked. The fix was in, and you couldn’t tell him otherwise. I agree with Twin that Tideking is to blame for thinking this game is rigged. Since he’s found love, that hardline stance on some things has now soften him like a teddy bear. It was all good just a week ago. Here is what we learned:
1. The Saints game was fixed.
2. Twin was on the conspiracy theories on this podcast.
3. The criticism of NBA players from old heads has these young guys in their feelings.
4. Pepa, from the famed Hip-Hop group Salt-N-Pepa, has a body count that is too real.
5. The NOLA high school connections are overrated.
6. Batman & EZ Ed were ahead of their time for club scouting.
7. Engagement in a relationship without intimacy is a difficult task.
8. Atlanta women would ask to be on your roster.
*****
Still writhing from the Saints playoff loss, Twin exploded on this podcast with the notion that Drew Brees threw this game on purpose. Somebody got to him and paid him off. While the notion of paying a professional athlete in these times is laughable, it would be a highly suspect Red Flag if that happened. Brees had a regular season game check that averaged around $1.25 million. I don’t think he would’ve been hurting for money in the playoffs.
However, let’s follow the playoff pattern shall we. The 2017 playoff loss to the Vikings resulting to what we now know as the Minneapolis Miracle, is Brees’ last good playoff performance. He led a 2nd half comeback that all but won the game for the Saints. The last 3 playoff losses for Brees are due to his turnovers. Our defense has been Top 10 for the last 3 seasons and we had no excuse to finish our season in the Super Bowl each of those years.
Brees threw an INT against the Rams in overtime in the 2018 playoffs. A critical INT early against the Vikings in the 2019 playoffs, and this year’s playoff debacle with these 3 INTs against the Bucs finally slapped the blinders off of my face and the noise canceling headphones off of my ears. The man, the myth, the legend that is Drew Brees is no more.
As a Saints fan, we are not alone in our conspiracy theories. The Saints conspiracies are well documented amongst our crew. I genuinely believe that the Saints will never go to another Super Bowl as long as Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the NFL. The Minneapolis Miracle was not a fluke. The biggest one that has gone down in history as the most egregious non-call was when refs didn’t throw a flag for pass interference on Nickell Robey-Coleman for his early hit on Tommy Lee Lewis.
Some other popular conspiracies include the Brady tuck rule going against the Raiders in the 2001 playoffs. The Seahawks’ OC Darrell Bevel calling a screen pass at the goal line instead of handing the ball to Marshawn Lynch who on the previous play, rushed the ball for 9 yards. The Titans defeating the Bills in the Music City Miracle. Was it a forward pass? The Eagles losing to the Bears in the Fog game. The NFL should’ve stopped play once there was zero visibility.
Whatever anyone says, there is one conspiracy that holds no merit whatsoever. The Falcons blew a 28-3 lead to the Patriots with 17 minutes left in the game. When all Falcons OC Kyle Shanahan had to do was run the ball with his 2 racehorses in Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman, he got cute. The evidence of this not being a conspiracy reared its head again in last year’s Super Bowl when Shanahan had yet another 2-man racehorse in Tevin Coleman and Raheem Mostert with a 20-10 lead against the 49ers with 10 minutes left in the game. If you take Shanahan out of the equation, the Falcons would’ve found another way to blow the lead.
To say that these games are fixed in some way is really giving the NFL too much credit. The NFL is like the Secret Service, they only make improvements through their tragedies. They ignored the studies on the lasting effects that concussions had on football players until former Chicago Bear, Dave Duerson, committed suicide and was later to have found CTE in his brain. The NFL only reacted in part because Duerson was a trustee on the player benefits board for the NFL Players Association.
The NFL ignored domestic violence their players were consistently getting arrested for until Ray Rice got caught on a casino camera landing a haymaker on his fiancé. Their most recent tragedy was the killing of George Floyd. This time, the NFL couldn’t brush police brutality off their shield like a spec of dirt anymore. Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protests had come back to haunt them and their lack of acknowledgement of the obvious racism against the communities that its black players come from was on full display.
The thing that Twin has to realize is that for a fix to work, you can’t have too many moving parts. It can’t be obvious enough to raise suspicion. Most of these things don’t come to light until years after the fact, when a party that was involved gets caught up in another unrelated incident, or by fluke accident. While his passion is laced with a well-warranted aggression, we have to give props to Drew Brees, for better or worse. He changed the narrative of the New Orleans Saints.
Think about this, in the last 15 seasons, you haven’t heard anyone utter the phrase same ole Saints. Along with Sean Payton, they changed the culture of the entire organization. While we are not a free agent destination, the Saints have become an undrafted free agent oasis. Football players know that if they come to the Saints and worked their asses off, they have a shot of getting on the field to play meaningful minutes in an NFL game. We’ve been spoiled these past 15 years, though the Saints future is uncertain, I am excited for what lies ahead.
Tony Love