The New Orleans Saints Are America's Team
There isn’t a team that better encapsulates the current American milieu than the 2021 New Orleans Saints.
They wake up and trudge to their day job, individual representations of the dying embers of a declining power glowing dimly to remind them of a past forever out of reach, aiming for the simple Sisyphean task of staying alive. They’re all hurt in some way, ravaged by COVID-19 outbreaks, and most times it feels like they’re not trying to succeed at all but simply survive.
Still, they march obediently on.
With just one week to play in the regular season (TBD on how long America has until this stage), Sean Payton’s squad has a very real chance to reach the postseason for a fifth consecutive time. It’s a truly miraculous statement when you think about it, beginning with the fact that the team has started four different quarterbacks behind a papier-mâché offensive line that played less than 20 snaps with its starting lineup intact. That by itself would spell a doomed 4-13 season for most organizations, but Payton and company have wobbled their way to .500 with just one enormous game remaining. New Orleans has started a staggering 57 players this season—an NFL record. That’s worse turnover than a Tucson Taco Bell, yet despite playing with mostly spare parts, this team will still be participating in meaningful football on the last Sunday of the regular season. A road win over the hated Atlanta Falcons, plus a little help from the hated Los Angeles Rams, is all that sits between the Saints and a glorious postseason berth.
It’s even more impressive when you check to see how well teams in similar circumstances fared. The 2021 Houston Texans started 56 players, just one shy of the Saints’ record, and currently sit at 4-12 with one game left to play. The 2019 Miami Dolphins also started a total of 56 players and ended the year at 5-11. There’s really nothing more you can ask of this Saints team, even if they end up missing out on playoff glory.
After being spoiled for many years with a Hall of Famer under center, Saints fans have been forced to take a step back into how their lives were in the BC era (Before Championship). The city of New Orleans received an NFL franchise in 1967 and did not win a playoff game until Y2K. Simply making the playoffs was a monumental accomplishment celebrated around the Gulf South like a Super Bowl mashed inside a Mardi Gras parade. For now, at least, we’re back to that feeling, and it’s one that shouldn’t be dismissed as a disappointment. No draft slot is worth missing out on the chance to crush your most loathed division rival on the way to earning a playoff berth in their own stadium.
It’s part of why New Orleans is truly America’s team in 2021.
Living under the shadow of a dominance that everyone can see no longer exists as it once did, the Saints move forward with vengeance on the brain and COVID in the respiratory system. Brokenly limping along, this team mirrors its country’s citizens who wake up every day to dutifully adjust to whatever new way of life blooms after the fog of the old way dissipates.
They don’t know how truly broken they are because they refuse to notice, and they don’t realize they can’t make it to the top because they’re too naïve to believe otherwise.
They’re as American as apple pie … or the sport they play.