That awkward moment when you make eye contact with someone… between the little crack in a bathroom stall.
I got to my LAX gate a tad earlier than I expected, so I decided to use up valuable battery life to tell you a little story.
Early this morning (well, late last night), I had this urge to check into my flight online. Don’t know why, I just did. So I went to Emirates’ website and was like, “Yo, browser. Check me in.” But in Arabic, the site shook its head feverishly, “No, fool, your itinerary doesn’t exist.”
I was quite taken aback. Two reasons, one: It called me “fool.” Two, and probably more importantly: I didn’t have tickets.
It’s the final Monday Night matchup of the season, and ESPN decided to let the best team in the NFL host it.
Remember how last week I told you Saints tend to under perform against non-marquee teams? Well, Titans nearly won that game in the final seconds last week. And today’s game (at 2-11 Vikings) is another great example of a non-marquee team. A horrible team. A team that has nothing to lose. And because they have nothing to lose, the Saints will have to work that much harder to make sure they don’t make silly mistakes. Especially since Adrian Peterson is [for some reason] in the backfield again. Luckily for the Saints though, it’s an indoor game, and the Saints love the indoors (it’s high 30s outside the dome in Minneapolis).
I’ll make this post quick because I’m writing using slow Internet in a drafty lodge up in Big Bear Lake, Calif… with a mouse lingering in the fire place.
What’s better than a great primetime Saints game? Another primetime Saints game the very next week!
Monday Night Football! It’s going to be great. It’ll be the Saints’ first Monday Night Football game this year (they will also play against the Falcons the night after Christmas during Monday Night), and that too against the tough NFC leader.
Saints aren’t playing today, and thus not only is the team’s football weekend going to be that much more boring, but mine and the rest of the nation’s will be too. There are only maybe three fun games for non-fans this weekend. Three of 14 is pretty pathetic (which, correct me if I’m wrong, has kind of been the trend this season? Maybe it’s because the AFC is boring). Good thing the USC/Oregon game last night was super exciting or else maybe football fans may not have shown up to work come Monday.
Now starts the real part of the season for the Saints. In their final 8 weeks of the season, they will have one Bye, face three division rivals, and play two other teams who they may face in the playoffs (but I predict they’ll play one of those teams in the first round and beat them at home).
I’m going to make this one quick because it’s Eid (Eid Mubarak by the way) and I just got back from prayer and the game starts in like 5 minutes. Notes for the game: DO NOT do what you did last week when you lost to a winless Rams team. That team wasn’t the Saints. That play calling by Pete Carmichael (because Payton was still upstairs) was just horrible. Nothing like the Saints. Saints are pass-first, not run-first. You can’t run on the first two downs and expect miracle after miracle by Drew on 3rd.
Last week, the coolest team in the league, the New Orleans Saints, hosted a suffering 0-6 Colts team that lost its prize quarterback earlier in the year. They gave the Colts an early Christmas present by dropping only 62 points on them (which is now the record for the largest margin of victory to the Colts’ 7 points) when they very easily could’ve scored more if they didn’t sit Brees in the fourth (though Saints still scored two touchdowns in the last quarter, including a pick-six).
Look at those records. The Colts have no win on the season… so today is not going to even be a challenge for the Saints in primetime. Sure, the Saints got their second loss of the season last week, handed to them happily by the division rivals Tampa Bay Bucs… but I think that was mostly because tight end Jimmy Graham fell onto Coach Payton early in the first quarter. Payton coached from the bench for the remainder of the first half, but he never returned to coaching in the second half.
Now this is football: Saints at Panthers last week and Saints at Bucs this week. Division rivalries pack a lot of energy and heat into four quarters. Last Sunday, Roman Harper was fined just $15,000 for hitting Steve Smith late in the endzone (so worth it), and a brawl broke out. I hope something like that happens this week, because the Saints need to get angry. Their defense is just okay, and they need so more umph in order to be somewhat close to their Super Bowl defense from a couple years ago.
This game is gonna be a snooooooozer (still a fun game, but it’s going to be a blow out). Even though we have idiots out there calling for the Panther upset (ahem, Colin Cowherd), the Panthers really don’t stand a chance against their division rival Saints.
This is the perfect trap game if there ever was one.
In high school, I became a loyal Citibank customer. My parents were members of Cal Fed, which was bought by Citigroup in 2002. So I guess you could say I was born into Citibank. But when they started imposing fees on me because I was poor and couldn’t keep my balance above the $1,500 minimum, I split from the company shortly after returning from Cairo.