Closing Remarks — On Fandom, Farewells, and Flaming Tables

We all saw the end at different points.

Pundits pat themselves on the back for correctly deducing that the once-mythological passer could no longer sling it with quite as much ease as he used to. “Arm Truther’s” have a footprint that can be traced back to as early as 2014 if my archaeological dig is believed to be accurate. He’d go on to throw for another 29,277 and 208 touchdowns after the first mention of a dead arm that I could find. But nevertheless, they consulted the all-knowing-all-22 and algorithms delivered from on high to determine that Brees, at some point, would lose his battle to father time. That goes down as a W in the scorecard.

Saints fans were resistant to the idea that Brees’s arm would fall off a proverbial cliff, and they were mostly right given the tremendous success he had for years. With an offensive mind like Sean Payton at the wheel, there was no reason why Brees shouldn’t be able to play point guard and set guys up with easy, smart throws. Joe Montana famously didn’t throw darts at balloons, he threw balloons at darts. This could work.

The NFL’s most accurate passer began to miss throws and shy away from the downfield attack that made the offense so insomnia-inducing for defensive coordinators. Even the innermost sanctum of Sean Payton acolytes raised a skeptical eyebrow as a journeyman QB out of BYU became a major part of the running, punting, and passing game, presumably to spell the aging legend.

And it hardly mattered. The Saints are fumbling with the bow on the most successful stretch without a championship in the NFL’s cruel history.

It should have worked, at least once.

2009 felt almost like a righting of wrongs done to the team by an indifferent universe that doesn’t give a piss in a rainstorm whether or not every NFL team’s dog will have its day. New Orleans is a region that has loved its band of loveable losers so dearly, strung along without so much as a pat on the head in return. They’ve stayed not only loyal — but obsessive.

Saints chic was “Shame, but make it fashion. (Or lunch)”. The now-iconic paper bag over the head is perhaps a way to save face for other fanbases aping the tradition. But in New Orleans, the bags soon became gem-crusted and vivacious, a statement rather than a deflection. The bags, though an admission of failure, were a way for fans to share their identity, not conceal it.

This has always struck me as a fun coping mechanism but came with the potential to get explosive once that taste of winning finally came.

The four major American sports leagues are largely made up of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Some seem destined to wait for eternity, but as any team with one magic moment will attest to, banners fly forever. Browns and Bears fans can commiserate together about years of ineptitude, but 1985 is encased in amber and deep dish pizza, under glass in their museum of good-feelings next to the Wing of First-Kisses. All it takes is one.

Sports are mostly about waiting. Waiting for a young team to develop, waiting to find out if a young phenom will drop in your lap at the draft, waiting for LeBron to leave the Eastern Conference, waiting for schedules to drop to plan your vacation, waiting for this miserable season to be over, waiting all day for Sunday Night. Waiting for being a fan to pay off for once.

For many, waiting for something becomes the ‘something’.

Until it isn’t. Life is almost entirely based on luck, and sports are no different at all. Daniel Khaneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, when asked for his favorite equation wrote:

Success = talent + luck
Great Success = a little more talent + a lot of luck

The last man standing at the end of every NFL calendar year usually comes down to who is the most healthy by the end of the year, or sometimes even who ends up having the ball last at the end of the game. For the armchair experts, this theory can either be liberating or a uniquely cruel prison.

For Saints fans, 2009 felt closer to a justification of fandom, a reward for the suffering rather than a probability breaking in the right direction. Doesn’t Sisyphus deserve the rest of the day off?

It can’t be argued that the Saints didn’t enjoy Great Success and it’s safe to say they had “a little more talent” than most years. Solving for ‘y’ becomes a romantic, thoughtful problem rather than a mathematical one. That, to put it bluntly, delusion will always and forever be what keeps fans of losing teams hanging on. Numbers are cold and don’t care much for the losers and underdogs. But years like 2009 are why the games are played instead of planned on spreadsheets.

The 2009 Saints were powered by Drew Brees fully separating himself from the plucky passers that make up the NFL’s upper-middle class. Sean Payton: the mad scientist at his best. Skill position players were headlined by a winner of the most prestigious award in College Football, and a receiver whose alma matter no longer has a football program. Jonathan Vilma and Will Smith added legitimacy to the defense. The stars had aligned, both in terms of personnel and a more cosmic interpretation.

The tour featured many unforgettable moments: The Fleur De Leap capping off the greatest comeback in franchise history, smacking the taste-buds out of the New England Patriots in front of America, and Robert Meachem’s astonishing breakthrough in alchemy, creating touchdown from turnover. You understand why “luck” might have been a dirty word in Crescent City circa 2009.

Perhaps most impressive was the gauntlet of QB’s Brees and the Saints had to get through on their way to immortality. The postseason roadmap called for the Saints to vanquish Kurt Warner, Bret Favre, and Peyton Manning, a series of trials unthinkable after a recent stretch of playoffs where Matt McGloin, Sam Bradford, and Mitch Trubisky somehow make it to the dance.

With near-perfect QB play, an opportunistic defense, and if I may solve for y: a lot of luck, the Saints, and Drew Brees earned themselves a seat at the table of the NFL’s elite. Waiting no longer was the ‘something’. Saints fans had ‘something.’

Nobody shouldered more of the load than Brees, who (rightfully) receives most of the praise for pushing the Saints to the top. A feat like that puts you in the storybooks, which last long after the parade passes.

The city that never had ‘nothin had Brees. In 2010 as black and gold confetti spun down on Miami, that felt like enough to be eternally satisfied.

“Life can’t compete with memories that never have to change” -Conor Oberst

The following decade was unkind to the Saints. I am writing these words in an attempt to linger in happy memories for just a moment longer before the truth sets in. Anyone who clicked on this link does not need the detailed play-by-play. Being a fan means getting to choose where to linger, and most of us voluntarily scrape ourselves against the jagged past as if sharpening us for a cruel reality. Who says sports don’t build character?

There’s no reason to idle in a bad memory. But there is no pretending that the ending to this story was happy.

No repeat came in 2010 as the Saints fell into the gaping maw in the Earth left by the Beast Quake. Hindsight tells us that this was one of the worst playoff teams of the Brees era, but it did introduce Saints fans to an on-again-on-again-on-again-on-again relationship with humiliation of a different kind — the kind where you left the paper bag at home. After all, you thought you were past that.

Any Saints fan with scars to show knows that 2011 was as good as it got. Drew at his best, the team a buzzsaw. Newcommers Darren Sproles and Jimmy Graham at the height of their powers and an offensive line that was more secure than the Capitol of the United States (it was 2011, that used to mean something back then) launched an air-raid offense with Brees as the mad-bomber. They decimated teams and sleepwalked to 30 points a game. Malcolm Jenkins and Roman Harper wear the blame for how it ended, but the 2011 Saints only sin was leaving too much time on the clock.

Then came Bountygate, which is well-documented and deconstructed by fans who were better equipped to channel their venom than I am.

This is when the Saints relationship with humiliation started getting hot and heavy. They were dragged through the mud by people acting in bad faith and were made an example of. That was fine. The revenge tour was coming up. Brees was a giant slayer, not the type to be walled off from glory forever. The crest of the wave was coming.

And then suddenly a decade had gone by. Brees, for as prolific as he remained in the lean years, was married to the worst defenses ever constructed. A string of 7–9 seasons doesn’t sound quite as hopeless as the bottom feeders of the NFL, but it was as bad in a lot of ways. Brees toiled away and became one of the greatest passers in NFL history in what may as well have been anonymity. The players, the coaches, and the league all let Drew down in some way or another. For as loudly as Brees’s accomplishments were sung by the faithful, it was drowned out bythe drone of years passing with nothing to show for it. Two different NFC South quarterbacks won MVP on trips to the Super Bowl while Brees watched.

And then the Miracle (depending on who you ask). And then the No-call. There are no words left to say about that day in 2019. There is no sentence construction that will straighten it out. If the NFL gods are listening, surely they would reward the Saints with a path to revenge, redemption — or some form of closure or justice.

Instead, it was the beginning of the end (the real end) in earnest.

As early as 2017, the Saints were finally free of the 7–9 quicksand. The defense steadily improved and rose to dominance. The defense was no longer the problem. Until it was. Football isn’t widely regarded as the ultimate team sport not because of moments of success where teammates work together in beautiful synchrony, but because of moments where one person ruins it for everyone else. Marcus Williams has grown into a fine player, one the Saints likely won’t be able to afford, but in a Minnesotan spaceship far from home, he changed history, cut the legs off legacies. One last jump-scare for the worst-ever-defense to rear its head. Just when you think the killer is dead, it strikes.

By 2018, the defense was good (cross my heart!) But it was still a trick. For once, it wasn’t the Saints defense holding the football for Charlie Brown, it was the NFL shield.

This will not be another rant on one of the biggest failures in professional sports. There is no more rage left to siphon. The Earth has cooled and the cataclysm of NFL officiating have seemingly been forgotten. Winning was the only chance at closure this team and these people had. Now, winning any future championship will be something else entirely. Till then, waiting goes back to being the something.

For a team as good as the 2018 Saints, the No-Call seemed like a lot of things: A sick joke, a fix by the NFL, punishment by god. It did not feel like the window slamming shut, but it was. Even as I write this, the events of last night aren’t as sharp as that moment of disbelief. The Saints had a lot of talent but none of the luck. They wouldn’t be the first team to be sunk that way, but they were the first to see that the house always wins.

(A quick aside: there’s an argument to be made that there is an entire universe of bounces, lucky and unlucky, that we cannot possibly perceive. Even this run of the last few years where it feels like they’re being tortured by an entire pantheon of trickster godss has been incredibly lucky. What happens if the 49ers don’t take Reuben Foster? What if the Saints go all in and trade for Josh Norman like they tried to do? What if the NFL doesn’t schedule a preseason game vs Green Bay and Sean Payton never crosses paths with Taysom Hill? What if the Jets take a different offer for Teddy Bridgewater and the 2019 season is over before it starts? And what if the Miami Dolphins say yes to Drew Brees and Sean Payton is forced to hitch his wagon to Jay Cutler or Tony Romo? You can and will drive yourself insane if you keep at this for long enough. Whether you think the Saints of the last 10 years come out net-positive or net-negative in terms of luck is almost irrelevant. Of course, the Saints were also going to take Patrick Mahomes if he fell to them. So maybe it’s a wash.)

Defense or no defense, the time had passed. Long before the Vikings took the Superdome field in what honestly should have tipped us off to what 2020 would be, Brees was out of gas. An all-time bad performance by the Saints’ offensive line didn’t help, but the writing was on the wall. But of course, the Saints situational defense was a disaster again, which I thought was a thoughtful homage.

Everything after the No Call is a blur, a limbo in which so few good, new memories were made. The stakes were too high to get caught up in enjoying the last success Brees would ever have, and what the Saints might enjoy for the foreseeable future. No matter how many regular-season wins the team piled up, it would all be for nothing without a strong playoff performance. Such is life when a decade of greatness by Number Nine was wasted. Or maybe that’s this writer’s interpretation and I’m just projecting. Even I can at least admit it was fun to sweep the Atlanta Falcons with a punt-gunner at QB.

Ultimately, the Saints ran out of time to build the right team around Brees. What happened against the Buccaneers in an empty Superdome should not be any kind of indictment of Brees. The pendulum of complimentary football had finally swung the other way, where the defense underperformed but still did enough. Needing a big play, Sean trusted the backup QB before the man he’s gone to battle with for almost his entire NFL life. Brees was running on fumes from the starting gun, and the motor of the Saints finally crawled to a warm death in its own home, and yet so far from being surrounded by loved ones like he deserved. Brees had nothing left to give this team, and I would wager that will weigh heavier with him than it will on you and me. Upon seeing his own once god-like powers fade with his mortality, Miles Davis said that “When God punishes you, it’s not that you don’t get what you want. It’s that you get what you want and there’s no time left.”

Is god punishing Drew Brees? No. Certainly, no NFL god above would spoil fans with a perfect season like 2009. People, in my observations, have a habit of treating retiring players or even injured players as if they’ve passed on. You’re still going to get a face full of Brees’s birthmark on NBC in a living room near you soon. The man is going to push Wrangler Jeans long after the eventual heat-death of the universe. You do not have to say goodbye to Drew Brees if you don’t want to.

But that era of Saints football is gone. Even is Sean Payton is still here, the Saints have been having their cake and eating it too in regards to the salary cap for years, and now the situation in their left foot is looking quite precarious. With Brees in the fold, it was always justifiable to go for gold every single year. Now the future is uncertain, and now the can they’ve been kicking down the road is now in oncoming traffic. If there’s any confusion, nobody should have any regrets about that. It’s simply the cross to bear for being great for so long. We should be so lucky. The Saints have navigated cap hell like it was a mildly congested check-out line at Trader Joe’s, but I’m not even sure Mickey Loomis, the best cap escape artist in sports, can find a way out of this that won’t require a hard reset.

The Hall of Fame press tour for Brees will come, and that’s not really what this *gestures wildly* is. This wasn’t written to talk about his legacy or how he’ll be remembered. If you need someone to break it down for you, you should be plenty well rested from the 10 year nap you’ve taken and I trust you to catch up on what you missed.

This isn’t to forecast what comes next for the Saints. Nobody can know. The Saints have hemorrhaging two assistant coaches since I started writing this. This is only to throw some dirt on a grave, say a few words, and move on. This was no great final chapter for an all-time great, nor is it a twisting of the knife after so much futility. It’s not much, this.

I would like to muse, briefly, about living in a post-Brees world.

Maybe you’ve been listening to the consistently excellent SaintsTwitterPodcast and you’re interested in the prospect of emotionally disconnecting yourself from football. On some level, you owe it to yourself to not let a football team get you down. But that doesn’t mean “stop being a fan”.

There’s a way to enjoy the NFL’s “Live fast: Die Hard” mission statement and not have it break your heart every January. I know it because I’ve seen it in the most unlikely of places.

Playing with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line are the endlessly entertaining Buffalo Bills. And it’s a god damn party.

I went to school in upstate New York with mostly Buffalo Bills fans from 2014–2018. I arrived as they pinned their hopes to Kyle Orton and Sammy Watkins and departed as a young bazooka of a man named Josh Allen took the reigns and promptly blew himself up (he’s gotten better).

Saints fans who think that they have been crushed under the weight of missed chances and getting oh-so-close teams would do well to talk to an older Bills fan. Bills fans of my age have grown up in a world without any success for their entire childhood. In an effort to make sense of an unforgiving and confusing sports existence, Bills fans resorted to radical forms of fandom.

Tom Robbins wrote of smokers: “Every smoker is the embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It’s not the tobacco we’re after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.”

Robbins is talking about smoking cigarettes but the philosophy can be applied to the flaming folding table. The tradition is not born out of some kind of freezing madness that only comes from spending repeated winters on Lake Erie. It’s a radical form of celebration, a commitment to not letting this silly game become more than just that: a silly game.

What are sports if not a way to make clocks move at their worst, and a way for us to craft unforgettable stories and push the boundaries of human ability and cooperation? Why see them as anything more than a steadying presence in your life? There may be truth in the idea that losing and suffering makes winning all the sweeter, but winning is already plenty fun on its own.

And what is humor if not an attempt to make sense of an increasingly unpredictable, dangerous, and horrifying reality? Freedom from the burden of consciousness is not being a shitfaced upstate New Yorker, but it’s in the ballpark.

Who can say for certain if piss-drunk college kids from Rochester see this rite of passage as stealing fire from the gods, but in my own observations and conversations with Bills faithful, they have an uncanny ability to take the good and leave a lot of the bad behind. And sure, Bills fans are getting a taste for being good, much like Saints fans did in 2006. It’s house money for now, and maybe these losses will turn to bitterness soon. Maybe. I have reason to believe they have a damn good way to cope with disappointment. It’s more true to that ‘Laissez les bons temps rouler’ spirit than I think even New Orleans in some ways.

I have not been able to puzzle out what the dildo projectiles are a metaphor for. Watch this space for updates.

The lesson here is that now that Brees is truly stepping away, maybe the time has come to not see things for what they could have been or should have been, but merely what they are. Saints fans have been living in prisons of their own making by thinking of missed chances. The future may be dark, but I like to think that when my brain is wracked by Alzheimer's, my brain will not flash images of Corey White fumbling through the back of the endzone, but of the good times.

Maybe it’s never this good again. Maybe that was all we’ll have. It will have to be enough.

At least we’ve got the one.

Go Bills. #Wagons