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Aaron Brooks and I were walking out of a service tunnel at FedEx Field Sunday afternoon, headed toward the team bus -- exhausted, Brooks leaned heavily on me as we walked, which was at once endearing and at the same time made me feel a bit like the kid in those Mean Joe Greene Coke commercials -- when the Saints QB noticed coach Jim Haslett 15 feet ahead of us and decided to have a little fun.
"So you want the dirt on Haslett?" Brooks asked loudly.
What the heck, I thought, I'll play along.
"Yeah, I want to know what it's like to play for a team where the quarterback is so good and the coaching is sooooo bad," I hollered down the hallway, overacting like some daytime soap hack.
Haslett turned around slowly, glancing back with fire in his eyes like the bad guy in a horror movie, about to pounce.
Gulp.
Holy shnikies.
My 7th grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Hamilton, promised me that one day I'd pay for my sarcasm with a terrible misunderstanding, and it was finally coming to pass.
But just as I was about to take cover behind Brooks (I would claim later to be getting in position to chop-block the charging Haslett) the coach smiled a wry grin and yelled, "I should have known. What are you two guys doing back there?"
Whew. For a second, I got to experience the moment of fear that QBs like Terry Bradshaw must have experienced back in Haslett's day. Or what poor Patrick Ramsey must have felt like after being planted, corkscrewed, head-slapped, crunched, bent backwards, snapped sideways and Beetle Baileyed all afternoon by the Saints' suffocating and merciless D.
And at that moment I knew it was true.
Before the season they were written off for dead -- just like in those B horror movies. As Halloween approaches (by the way, I'm going as Bono and baby Oop is dressing up as The Edge) they have risen out of the murky N'awlins swamp and are once again stalking the pretty-boy QBs and visor-wearers of the NFL.
No one is safe. Hide the kids. Lock your doors. In New Orleans this season it's
screech
flash
da-DADADA ... The Return of the Swamp Thing.
And in this movie you root for the monster.
Take your hands away from your face and look at this Dr. Frankenstein roster of castoffs, has-beens, diehards and gutter flowers. Brooks had been buried on the Packers depth chart until a trade and offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy brought him back to life. Return man Michael Lewis, who took two to the house Sunday, has no college experience, grew up in a section of New Orleans called The Dump and used to drive a beer truck. (Last year his story inspired me to write the most powerful three-word sentence in the English language: I like beer.)
Kyle Turley, the human ink blotter, has to be the nicest crazy man I've ever met. Wideout Joe Horn once worked in a sofa factory, and it had been so long since fellow receiver Jake Reed caught a touchdown pass that on Sunday he asked teammates to knock the dust off him after scoring on a 31-yard pass in the fourth quarter.
These misfits are all that's left after an off-season purge of superstars like La'Roi Glover, Joe Johnson, Ricky Williams, Willie Roaf and GM Randy Mueller. I know what the Saints did last summer: by gutting their roster, which had been plagued by infighting and persnickety stars, they returned to their junkyard dog mentality.
"This feels like 2000 again," says defensive tackle Norman Hand, referring to the team's run to the second round of the playoffs two seasons ago. (By the way, at 310 pounds, Hand can get away with wearing a baby blue pinstriped suit like he did on Sunday. Talk about scary.) "It's all about heart. We don't go by Pro Bowls here. Heck, half the people there [in Hawaii] shouldn't be there anyway."
And so, in a league where the parity of talent is almost absurd, New Orleans has pulled off the greatest example of addition by subtraction by focusing on the kinds of things money still can't buy -- heart, emotion, chemistry, good old cajun scrappiness. Want proof? The Saints are 14-6 on the road under Haslett, second only to the Eagles since 2000.
"We revamped some of the personnel," says Haslett. "We wanted to weed out some of the people we thought weren't our type of players. By the process of elimination we ended up getting some better character and some better players. This is a crazy business."
What I think he means is, you must be nuts to want to play quarterback against them. Ramsey, the poor bastard, was assaulted on almost every play. The first time he dropped back, linebacker Charlie Clemons hit him so hard the sickening thud made all 80,000 people in the stands collectively cringe. I don't think he knew where he was for the entire first quarter. He was picked off four times. He released more ducks than the SPCA. Sacked seven times, he finished with a 42.8 QB rating (you get 40 points for not tying your cleats together).
As time wound down, at one point Hand almost tackled the gutsy but overmatched rook by the ears. These guys, I swear, they'd do this for free. And they are as funny as they are ferocious. Later I slid up to the big guy and, real quiet-like asked him, "Be honest Norman, you guys really like, really enjoy beating people up, don't you?"
"Well, the QB was like a sitting duck back there," said Norman. (Okay, am I overdoing the horror movie theme just a bit?) "This is our forte, pinning your ears back and going after that guy. On Monday mornings it feels good to know the other team is going to be real sore. Yeah, it's definitely fun."
After the game Ramsey ran off the field, worried perhaps that they might make him play some more. Everything -- thigh pads, socks, chin strap -- seemed to have been knocked or twisted out of place. His uni was soaked. It was caked in dirt, particularly on the back, and so grass-stained it almost looked mossy.
The evidence was overwhelming.
He had been attacked by
screech
flash
da-DADADA
The Swamp Thing. David Fleming is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at FlemFile@carolina.rr.com. But watch out -- you could be the WHYLO of the Week.
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In the Crosshairs
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