More Pain for Saints: Another Officiating Error and an Injury to Drew Brees
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| Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press |
LOS ANGELES — Sean Payton coped by quarantining himself for three days. He binged Netflix programming (“Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” and “You”) and scarfed Jeni’s Splendid ice cream. He could excavate his grief, compartmentalizing but not forgetting — really, you can’t forget an injustice like that — because the officiating debacle that most likely denied his New Orleans Saints a Super Bowl berth occurred in their final game of the season.
Yet Payton, the Saints’ head coach, watched another blown call benefit the Los Angeles Rams and infuriate his team again on Sunday, nullifying a go-ahead touchdown in the first half. This time, he and the Saints did not have an off-season to work through their emotions. More than two quarters remained, and the Saints’ star quarterback, Drew Brees, lingered on the sideline, out after their second possession with an injured right thumb.
As it did in the teams’ last matchup eight months ago, New Orleans lost to the Rams, and at this stage all the Saints want is a game officiated fairly, without human error — not their own, at least — contributing to their demise.
To be sure, other aspects of their 27-9 defeat at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum irked Payton, who fumed afterward about the Saints’ meager offensive production — 244 total yards; their shoddy tackling, particularly on Cooper Kupp’s 66-yard catch-and-run that set up the touchdown that secured the Rams’ victory; and the performance of their offensive line, which allowed the Rams’ defensive menace, Aaron Donald, to prove once more that he is the shortest distance between two points
It was Donald who, on Brees’s third-down incompletion to Jared Cook, shed a block and blasted him on his follow-through. Countless times before, Brees had jammed fingers on helmets. At once he sensed that this felt different, worse, more significant: He couldn’t, for the first time, grip the football. He planned to meet later on Sunday with a hand specialist in Southern California but, based on his despondent mood and the splint encasing his thumb, it seemed he was bracing for an extended absence. Only once, in 2015, since Brees joined the Saints 13 years ago has he missed a start because of injury.
“I really don’t know at this point,” Brees said.
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| Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images |
Brees’s health is the team’s foremost concern heading into next week’s game at Seattle, but the enduring memory for the Saints (1-1) will be the same as it was after the deflating N.F.C. championship game loss, when late in the fourth quarter Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman, without consequence, clobbered receiver Tommylee Lewis before the ball arrived, and Los Angeles went on to win in overtime. They will wonder whether an officiating crew will get a critical call right.
“When people are at the top of their craft,” said defensive end Cameron Jordan, whose fumble return for a touchdown was negated, “usually that doesn’t happen, right?”
This week, the Saints confronted their past only because they were forced to. The schedule dictated that they play the Rams (2-0), and so the Saints spent the week recalling the worst moment of their careers.
They answered questions. They glimpsed highlights. They relived the misery that had been processed, cataloged, lodged away — and then, on a micro level, did so again on Sunday. With about six minutes left in the second quarter, Trey Hendrickson stripped the ball from Rams quarterback Jared Goff at the Saints’ 19-yard line. Cam Jordan scooped it up and ran it back for a touchdown — or so he thought.
The play had been blown dead as an incompletion, and so even though the Saints were granted possession after video review reversed the call to a fumble, they were given the ball at their own 13, where Jordan recovered the ball. Instead of taking the lead, they turned the ball over on downs, and the Rams, capitalizing on a short field, kicked a field goal to go up, 6-3, at halftime.
“The things we can control as coaches are the things that I just alluded to,” said Payton, referencing the Saints’ 11 penalties, poor running game (20 carries, 57 yards) and pressure allowed. “When we get poor officiating or an awful call like that, we can’t control that.”
It was Jordan who hinted of an officiating bias against the Saints after the N.F.C. championship game loss, acknowledging the team’s combative relationship with the league that dates to Bountygate, when members of the team’s coaching staff were determined to have rewarded players who injured opponents. Jordan again derided the officials on Sunday, comparing them to Foot Locker employees (who wear black-and-white striped shirts) and saying he never heard the whistle.
“I’m sure the N.F.L. will come out with some other statement about it,” Jordan said.
The non-call that afternoon last year in New Orleans was so egregious that — with the input of Payton, a member of the league’s competition committee — the rules were changed for this season, with coaches permitted to challenge an official’s judgment when pass interference isn’t called. (However tempted he might have been on Sunday, Payton did not challenge the first pass play.) By adding a subjective element to replay, that experiment has created problems while solving others, but it at least seeks to correct a wrong.
There is no mechanism in place to reverse what happened on Sunday, or in Week 1 when the Saints played Houston and should have had 15 additional seconds as they hurried to try to score before halftime. Wil Lutz missed a long field-goal attempt, but redeemed himself by making a longer one, the 58-yard game winner, as time expired.
With Teddy Bridgewater ineffective behind that struggling line in relief of Brees on Sunday, going 17 of 30 for 165 yards, Lutz supplied the Saints’ offense, kicking three field goals. The first two kept the score close, at 6-6, midway into the third quarter. The third came after Todd Gurley and Brandin Cooks scored touchdowns on consecutive drives, taking a 20-6 lead that New Orleans never threatened.
Across the past 22 months, the Rams and the Saints have played four times — the Rams winning three — establishing a rivalry between two productive offenses coached by innovative masterminds named Sean. The Rams would love their coach, Sean McVay, and quarterback, Goff, to duplicate the success and longevity of Payton and Brees in New Orleans. The Saints, having won a Super Bowl and been deprived of a chance at a second, want good news about their star quarterback and a clean game already.
Ben Shpigel is a sports reporter and has covered the N.F.L. and the New York Jets since 2011. He has also covered the New York Yankees and, before that, the Mets. He previously worked for The Dallas Morning News. @benshpigel
“When people are at the top of their craft,” said defensive end Cameron Jordan, whose fumble return for a touchdown was negated, “usually that doesn’t happen, right?”
This week, the Saints confronted their past only because they were forced to. The schedule dictated that they play the Rams (2-0), and so the Saints spent the week recalling the worst moment of their careers.
They answered questions. They glimpsed highlights. They relived the misery that had been processed, cataloged, lodged away — and then, on a micro level, did so again on Sunday. With about six minutes left in the second quarter, Trey Hendrickson stripped the ball from Rams quarterback Jared Goff at the Saints’ 19-yard line. Cam Jordan scooped it up and ran it back for a touchdown — or so he thought.
The play had been blown dead as an incompletion, and so even though the Saints were granted possession after video review reversed the call to a fumble, they were given the ball at their own 13, where Jordan recovered the ball. Instead of taking the lead, they turned the ball over on downs, and the Rams, capitalizing on a short field, kicked a field goal to go up, 6-3, at halftime.
“The things we can control as coaches are the things that I just alluded to,” said Payton, referencing the Saints’ 11 penalties, poor running game (20 carries, 57 yards) and pressure allowed. “When we get poor officiating or an awful call like that, we can’t control that.”
It was Jordan who hinted of an officiating bias against the Saints after the N.F.C. championship game loss, acknowledging the team’s combative relationship with the league that dates to Bountygate, when members of the team’s coaching staff were determined to have rewarded players who injured opponents. Jordan again derided the officials on Sunday, comparing them to Foot Locker employees (who wear black-and-white striped shirts) and saying he never heard the whistle.
“I’m sure the N.F.L. will come out with some other statement about it,” Jordan said.
The non-call that afternoon last year in New Orleans was so egregious that — with the input of Payton, a member of the league’s competition committee — the rules were changed for this season, with coaches permitted to challenge an official’s judgment when pass interference isn’t called. (However tempted he might have been on Sunday, Payton did not challenge the first pass play.) By adding a subjective element to replay, that experiment has created problems while solving others, but it at least seeks to correct a wrong.
There is no mechanism in place to reverse what happened on Sunday, or in Week 1 when the Saints played Houston and should have had 15 additional seconds as they hurried to try to score before halftime. Wil Lutz missed a long field-goal attempt, but redeemed himself by making a longer one, the 58-yard game winner, as time expired.
With Teddy Bridgewater ineffective behind that struggling line in relief of Brees on Sunday, going 17 of 30 for 165 yards, Lutz supplied the Saints’ offense, kicking three field goals. The first two kept the score close, at 6-6, midway into the third quarter. The third came after Todd Gurley and Brandin Cooks scored touchdowns on consecutive drives, taking a 20-6 lead that New Orleans never threatened.
Across the past 22 months, the Rams and the Saints have played four times — the Rams winning three — establishing a rivalry between two productive offenses coached by innovative masterminds named Sean. The Rams would love their coach, Sean McVay, and quarterback, Goff, to duplicate the success and longevity of Payton and Brees in New Orleans. The Saints, having won a Super Bowl and been deprived of a chance at a second, want good news about their star quarterback and a clean game already.
Ben Shpigel is a sports reporter and has covered the N.F.L. and the New York Jets since 2011. He has also covered the New York Yankees and, before that, the Mets. He previously worked for The Dallas Morning News. @benshpigel
Reference : nytimes .com
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