OPINION / ANALYSIS
NEW ORLEANS – If you’re looking for perspective following Saturday night’s Debacle in the Dome, look no further than Saints running back Mike Bell.
The bruising tailback had only eight yards on four carries, and yet, there he was in the locker room following New Orleans’ 24-17 loss to Dallas, his right wrist wrapped in a huge ice pack and his body bruised.
“We’ve got to win,” Bell said. “But we’re going to take it one game at a time like we’ve been doing all season. This game doesn’t define our team and it doesn’t define our season. We’re going to continue to finish games and finish strong and work towards getting to the Super Bowl.”
Indeed, any team that comes back from as many deficits as this Saints team has this season is going to persevere.
The past two weeks have been brutal, yes. And most people could have seen this coming at some point – “We’ve been making mistakes,” Saints defensive tackle Anthony Hargrove said. “It’s evident. They just caught up to us tonight.”
But What Saturday night does is it makes the Saints human.
There is no divine intervention.
Nothing is fated to the New Orleans.
And, despite what you’ll hear coming out of any athlete’s mouth, sometimes losing is good.
It can take a team that was resting on its laurels and humble it while also angering it.
“You’ve got to be able to take a negative and turn it into a positive,” Saints quarterback Drew Brees said. “I feel like sometimes you have to go through times like this, some of the heartbreak like this to give you an edge, just put that extra chip on your shoulder and go out and play better.”
Indeed, there’s still tons on the line for the Saints.
Sure, the perfect season is gone, but that has always been just a pipe dream, not one of the few goals the team set aside at the beginning of the season.
Undefeated doesn’t belong with winning the division, securing a playoff berth, earning home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
And of those, the Saints have already won two of them, winning the division and getting playoff berth.
From here on out, it’s what’s in front of the Saints instead of what’s behind them.
Said safety Roman Harper: “We still have our goals and everything we want.”
Added center Jonathan Goodwin: “We still want to go out and we don’t want to leave New Orleans come playoff time. Our goal is to go out and get home field.”
Learn from Saturday night’s mistakes and that’s exactly what will happen.
As Bell said, the loss doesn’t define this season. The rest of what’s left will.
