Sports in Perspective
We’re really excited about our pick, Akiem Hicks. It’s a guy that we really studied. As late as Friday, I would say we spent an hour and a half to two hours on this player. We felt that it was a guy that would be there for us. Height, weight and speed, he’s the kind of guy we’re looking at for our defensive system.
The New Orleans Saints will have five picks in the 2012 NFL Draft: 89 (3rd round), 122 (4th round), 162 (5th round), 179 (6th round) and 234 (7th round)
While it does us, as fans of the team, absolutely no good to mull over the “what if’s” and “what might have been’s” of the New Orleans Saints’ 2011/12 season, it’s never too soon to start looking forward to what could become of next season, right?
On 3rd and 6 from San Francisco’s 7 yard line, Drew Brees threw a screen pass short right to Pierre Thomas, who got within about a yard of the first down and two yards of a touchdown before he was hit helmet-to-helmet by 49ers’ SS Donte Whitner, knocked momentarily unconscious and lost the football in a fumble to LB Patrick Willis of San Francisco.
Believe it or not though, the facts prove that there is no better road team in the entire league to date since 2006 than the New Orleans Saints, with a 31-19 away record while featuring Drew Brees at quarterback and having Sean Payton as Head Coach.
Although the New Orleans Saints prevailed over the Detroit Lions in Saturday evening’s NFC portion of Wildcard contests by the final score of 45-28, it certainly did not start out looking like it would end that way at all.
The Lions and their long-suffering fans had been bragging about the restoration of the roar upon earning their first return trip to the NFC Playoffs since 1999 with a 10-6 record and the number 6 seed in 2011, and for good reason.
I truly believe that the New Orleans Saints will be far too motivated and way too much for the Lions to handle this Saturday night in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, with tens of thousands of crazed WhoDats making noise like Detroit’s young players have certainly never encountered before.
As hard as it might be to believe for the die hard Saints fan from way back when, many current fans of this team probably may not even remember more than a single losing season. Someone who started following the team 6 years ago in 2006, for instance, when Sean Payton became Head Coach and Drew Brees became the starting quarterback, would be in that very category of such people.
New Orleans is set to host the Detroit Lions in a Wild Card Round playoff game this Saturday night in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome at 7:00 PM CT, though the Saints’ ultimate goal is to keep playing football for another full month. Still, it’s never too soon for us as fans to look at what lies ahead for them next season, right?
The New Orleans Saints set a ton of records in this last game of the season. The NFL records for offensive yards in a season (7,474), team passing yards in a season (5,347), first downs in a season (416) and completions in a season (472) all now belong to the Saints. Those four records were previously held by the 2000 St Louis Rams (7,075), the 2000 Rams (5,232), the 2004 Kansas City Chiefs (398) and the 2010 New Orleans Saints/Indianapolis Colts (450) respectively.