Notes, quotes and a thought or two…
I watched the NFL on Sunday with great interest. I’ve been a New Orleans Saints fan for all of my life. It started with Archie Manning as a kid. I’ve seen it all in 42 years a Saints fan.
For years, I thought the Saints were cursed. My dad would make me so mad when he would talk about the Saints “preventing the win.” I’ll never forget watching the playoff game against the defending champion St. Louis Rams. When Az-Zahir Hakim fumbled the punt and the Saints recovered to secure their first playoff win, I cried like a baby. I celebrated wildly when the Saints beat the Colts in the Super Bowl and had to be told to settle down in the newsroom at the Daily Journal that Sunday night.
With all that said, this has been one of the most incredible seasons in Saints history. I watched every game they played this season and I don’t know how in the world the Saints won nine games this season. Consider they started with Jamies Winston, who just isn’t that good. Since then, they went through three other starting quarterbacks. They ended with a 30-20 win over rival Atlanta to go 9-8 on the season and a chance to go to the playoffs.
But San Francisco pulled off a 27-24 overtime win over Los Angeles to eliminate the Saints.
There are several things that we learned on Sunday.
• First off, Sean Peyton should be the NFL Coach of the Year. With all of the injuries this season, Peyton did his best coaching job of his career to manage nine wins and did it without Drew Brees. He’s the best coach in the NFL and I don’t really think that is up for debate.
•Secondly, the NFL is a quarterback driven-league. If you aren’t good at quarterback, you’re not going to be very good. The Saints have some serious work to do in the quarterback room. Will they keep Winston? Will they go with Taysom Hill? If so, can he stay healthy with his style of play? Will they go to free agency and try to trade for a QB? Will they try the draft in a weak QB draft year? There are way more questions than answers at this point.
• Thirdly, as I watched the Rams and 49ers, I realized that you can’t ever depend on anybody else to help you get in the playoffs. I give the 49ers credit for doing what they had to do to get in the playoffs. And as I’ve always known, you can’t depend on Matthew Stafford for anything.
• And finally, you can only overcome just so many injuries in one season. From Michael Thomas, Andrus Peat, Jameis Winston and numerous others, the injuries just took their toll. If anything, this season was a fun one. And the Saints beat Tom Brady and the Bucs twice. That’s always a good thing.
In other news
• Leake Academy boys basketball coach Phil Shepard got his 800th career win this week against Winston Academy. As far as I can tell, Shepard is only the 11th boys coach in Mississippi to get to 800 wins. Add former coach Doyle Wolverton’s 1,200-plus career wins and that’s more than 2,000 wins at one school for two coaches. If you can’t add, that’s a bunch.
• In other MAIS news, did you see the Simpson County Academy and Park Place girls score. Simpson won 90-3. This is the kind of thing that coaches get fired for. And this is particularly hard in the MAIS because the clock starts running when the lead gets to 35 points. There are times when blowouts can’t be avoided but this one I just don’t understand. There are things you can do to hold the score down if you want to. This is just poor in my opinion. There’s a right way and wrong way to do things and stuff like this come back to haunt you.
Robbie Robertson is sports editor for the Newton County Appeal, you can email him at rrobertson12811@yahoo.com
