The Exile’s Report, Bobby Fuller Four edition

Thursday, 09 October 2008 10:08

The Exile's Blog

Breaking Rocks in the Hot Sun Department:

Did you know that Ed Hochuli, the fine gent that refereed our loss to the Vikings on Monday night, is a lawyer?  Like you needed another reason to be angry.

Lawyers are usually known for rigor and discipline with language.  Here’s Hochuli’s explanation of why, to the surprise of everyone but longtime Saints fans, he did not rule that Vikings RB Adrian Peterson had fumbled after his review of the replay:



“When the runner’s knee hit the ground, although the ball had started to come away from the body it was still held in the hand, and so the ruling on the field stands as called.”

Now, here’s the NFL definition of “possession,” from the 2006 version of the Official NFL Rule Book, the most recent I could find on the internet:

“Article 7 A player is in possession when he is in firm grip and control of the ball inbounds.”

Note that the standard is not control.  It is not firm grip or control.  It is not “well, it’s in his hand.” It is firm grip AND control.  If you can’t come out and announce “…the player had firm grip and control when his knee hit the ground…” it’s a fumble.  What we got sounded like what I would get if I couldn’t understand what Bobby Hebert was saying, so I asked Ricky Jackson to come over and translate.   You have to assume that Hochuli’s explanations of the U.S. Constitution are only marginally less comprehensible than the long-lost audiotapes of Kurt Cobain auditioning for an auctioneer’s job.

The real issue is that any crew of people follow their leaders, and Hochuli’s entire crew is, already this early in its disastrous year, tentative and twitchy at the same time, desperate to avoid mistakes.  As a result player safety issues get missed (such as the helmet-to-helmet hit Vikings CB Cedric Griffin laid on TE Billy Miller, and two missed face mask grabs of Bush, who was being very closely watched by 46 Vikings and 70,000 Saints fans, but apparently not by these refs; swear to god WWE refs miss fewer fouls in Texas cage matches) while they frantically struggle to cover their butts with makeup calls between the 20s like waving off an obvious grounding call on Brees and finding two offensive PI calls on the same Vikings WR.

This doesn’t excuse the loss, but as one sage pointed out on saintsreport.com, why does this (epic unilateral anti-Saints referee failure) seem to happen to us so often at home in big games?

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Paging Mr. Kenneth Department:

A lot of movement on the roster this week in response to injuries.  Here was the official AP notice on the Saints moves on Wednesday:

“NEW ORLEANS SAINTS:  Signed DT Jeff Charleston, DT Montavious Stanley, PK Taylor Melhaff, TE Sean Ryan.  Waived TE Buck Ortega. Placed on injured reserve CB Tracy Porter (wrist), FB Olanyihi Sobomehin (knee), PK Martin Gramatica (hairstyle).”

I was surprised as you, believe me.

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Quinine Department:

All humor aside, this was without question a bitter loss.  Once again, against a team they coulda-shoulda-woulda beaten, this went beyond the Haslett/Venturi-era disappointments, even the ones in 2002, because you knew that ultimately the whole concept was living on borrowed time.  This, however, had the vibe of a Mora-era loss.

There were two kinds of Mora-era losses:

1. Losses to the 49ers. We were always Cheers, and they were always Garry's Olde Towne Taverne. They always had the last word. End of discussion.  (Apologies to anyone under 30 for the Mesozoic Era references.)

2. Mysterious close losses to good to above-average teams that were not necessarily better, or more talented, where it seemed like we were always on the verge of taking control of the game, but never did.  We would always get beat in the second half by guys that had no business beating us, like Wade Wilson or Jeff Rutledge.

On the other hand, Mora-era losses never involved games where their kicker beat our kicker.

And my head almost literally exploded when Gibbs came with an eight-man blitz on the 3rd-and-13. The one thing you can't do in that situation is give up a touchdown. You don’t need a turnover.  You don’t even need to get them out of FG range.  You want them to come away with no more than three points and get the ball back.  Let them stay in freaking FG range. Who cares? The sad part is that Gibbs had the defense perfectly prepared and called a great night by the book, and just took the gas pipe on that last one.  If nothing else, it shows where this defense is, five games in and with all the injuries, and how small our margin for error is right now.

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Although this may be harder to believe than my Exiled head, this is still a good team.  Critics will point out the double-digit penalties in recent games, and that’s a fair point.  However, I think it underestimates the effect of constantly shifting lineups (at one point Monday night the offense was missing five starters) resulting from the worst injury bug I can remember in 40 years.

And rarely have I been this excited to see the opponent’s punter trot onto the field.  Any remaining critics of Reggie Bush’s talent or effort are invited to come visit Dr. Ex in Fist City.

I have absolutely no idea how to predict Sunday, other than to say that I will be In That Number, and I have not seen us lose a game in the Dome in the Payton Era.  Don’t know what that means against the spread, but in a few days we’re 3-3 and somehow still alive; 10-6 might be a stretch, but on the other hand if we can sweep the NFC South, a tall order, 9-7 still wins the division.

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7-6-1 last week, 38-34-2, after all this up a whopping 60 simoleons?  That’s a lot of stress for a tiny return.  Don’t try this at home.

If  Dr. Ex can squeeze out one more blog this week, we will ponder further how the Saints will fare against a team led by the NFL’s version of Capt. Queeg, and ask whether M. Night Shyamalan’s inspiration for the lead in “Unbreakable” was in fact Jason David.