The Saints should have been in the Super Bowl for other reasons.
Besides the infamous non-call in the NFC championship game that may have cost New Orleans a shot at playing on Super Sunday, the big game suffered in more ways than one.
TV ratings, among the lowest in years for the Patriots’ defensive-minded win over the Rams, would have been much higher if the combined 81-year-old Drew Brees and Tom Brady had matched up in what could have been called the Super Senior Bowl.
Instead of New England’s defense stuffing the Rams and young Jared Goff, a Pats-Saints duel would have been far more offensive with the grizzled Brees scoring more points while their defense would have given up more to Brady. The result: a shootout.
Instead of rabid Saints fans making the short commute from New Orleans, Mercedes Benz Stadium became a home field for the Patriots. Thousands of their fans traveled to Atlanta and were everywhere, a hundred of their jerseys on the street to every one for the Rams, who are only two years back in Los Angles. The most creative was a hybrid by a woman who loves the Patriots but now lives in LA and is a Rams’ season ticket holder.
The most unlikely attendees were two from Strasbourg, France, who won a fully paid trip worth an estimated $50,000 – including first class airfare, four nights at the Atlanta Sheraton, a car, generous per diem to do the town and excellent seats to the game.
Sabri and Barbara had never seen an American football game and barely knew the most basic rules. They were amazed that fans from opposing teams were thrown together beforehand because in Europe it would cause a riot. But they were looking forward to a higher-scoring game than a typical professional soccer match.
Oops, that’s what they got when it was still 3-3 midway through the fourth quarter; a game that only defensive players and coaches watching could fully appreciate in a stadium dominated by fans in various combinations of red, white and blue jerseys screaming their lungs out in what must have seemed like real foreign accent to the French couple. Afterward, they surely said in their delightful native brogue, “Non la grosse affaire?” Or, no super big deal.
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