NEW ORLEANS — The wait for the New Orleans Saints 2019 football season to arrive was the longest, most awful wait I can remember. The sadness, outrage, disbelief, and melancholy of the NFC Championship just sort of lingers with us. Like some uninvited guest in our heads that just won't leave and pops up to remind Saints fans what protracted anguish is, the blown call remains.
I had to train myself to not fight with national media, fans, or whoever when they would say on Twitter, “Saints fans need to just get over it, one call never decides a game WONK WONK WONK.”
I'll get over this how I damn well please, thank you very little. I care about the Saints way too much, but that's my life choice, and while I don't need so called smart media to respect it, I do reserve the right tell them to go play in traffic. And let me tell you, yelling at national media on Twitter was EXAHAUSTING.
The NFC Championship was instructive in that it revealed 99 percent of people and media still have no idea what New Orleans is culturally and have no understanding of how we deal with heartache. The parade protesting the Super Bowl infuriated too many national football media to count. They still don't grasp New Orleans is gonna party and laugh at our pain because we are New Orleans and we live life better than you.
Thankfully, just as the off season seemed it would break my spirit, Saints training camp arrived.
I've never been more ready to lie to myself about some undrafted rookie free agent becoming the next Pierre Thomas in my life. That person is Devine Ozigbo and I am seeing one tweet showing him with a great run away from demanding he split carries with Alvin Kamara.
Saints training camp is about two things; praying players avoid injuries and talking ourselves into players who will be cut before Week 1 and then promptly forgetting they even existed. Do you even remember Adam Bighill? He was an actual thing Saints fans cared about in 2017. Have you given one single thought to Adam since then? I thought so. That's ok, falling in love in the summer and then forgetting it ever happened is an essential part of football fandom.
So besides dreading injuries and believing players we didn't know existed until 30 seconds ago suddenly matter, what should we be looking at during Saints training camp?
Teddy Bridgewater's First Summer With Sean Payton
The Saints traded for everyone's favorite dancing quarterback late last summer so Bridgewater didn't get the benefit of any summer practices. Now he'll get real practice reps and likely start a couple preseason games. The Saints made sure to resign Bridgewater right after free agency started and to me they clearly have decided he's the guy to follow Drew Brees. You can say that's a bad idea and it won't work or whatever but I'll be stunned if Teddy isn't the first quarterback given a chance to lead the Saints once #9 rides off in the sunset.
I'll be listening to Sean Payton's daily press conferences to find coded messages about Bridgwater like a kid in the 1980's trying to find the Satanic messages in a Judas Priest album. Kids, in the 1980's Satanism was an actual thing people were panicked about. The great Bill Elder even did an entire special report on it for WWL. Stranger Things on Netflix has monsters and what not but real life 1980's was WILD TIMES y'all.
Making Kick Returns Great Again
The Saints invested heavily in special teams in 2017-2018 and were dominant in a way they have never been under Sean Payton, except for punt returns, where they were still terrible. That might be about to change with the addition of Marcus Sherels and Deonte Harris.
Sherels has 5 career punt returns for touchdowns and a 10.6 yards-per-return career average. Do you know the last time the Saints had a guy average 10 yards per punt return? 2011 when Darren Sproles did it. While Sherels has proven he can do it in the NFL, Harris had 14 kick return scores for Division II school Assumption.
They could both fumble in the preseason opener against Minnesota and Sean Payton could release them during the game, which while awful, would still be interesting and is just as entertaining, and being entertained is what we are here for.
Saints Player Media Swear Is Going To Break Out
Last year the training camp star of returning Saints players was Marcus Williams. It seemed like he was intercepting a Drew Brees pass every day in practice and was set to be the NFL's defensive player of the year. He had a very solid 2018 despite what most fans thought but he never quite lived up to the camp hype. So who will be 2019's veteran camp star?
I nominate PJ Williams. He's on a one year contract, his offseason DUI probably cost him 10 million dollars, and he should be VERY motivated to be good in 2019 because NFL teams pay big money for competent corners now. I'm ready for my Twitter feed to be nothing but gushing media tweets about PJ looking like a combination of Darrelle Revis and early 90's Deion Sanders.
Is it weird I need more Saints football to help me get over the torment of previous Saints football? My therapist will need to sort that out. I'm just glad Saints football is back.
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Ralph Malbrough is a Saints fan living in Houston. Email him at saintshappyhour@gmail.com, find him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SaintsForecast or download his podcast at Itunes.