It’s a shame that we’ll probably never get a true look at what the New Orleans Saints would’ve looked like with Jameis Winston running the offense at full strength.

The cupboard was far from bare when Drew Brees called it a career after the 2020 season. If it wasn’t for the contents of that cupboard, there is no way the Saints would have been able to win their division, a wild-card game, and host the eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Divisional Round.

In 2021, the roster was roughly the same, and New Orleans got off to a blazing 5-2 start with Winston as its quarterback. Then, after averaging 10 yards per carry at the start of a home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he went down for the rest of the season with an ACL injury. The Saints finished the year 9-8, which wasn’t good enough to snag a wild-card spot in the expanded playoffs.

With the drafting of Chris Olave, and the return of Winston as the starting quarterback, there were expectations for the Saints this season — even without Sean Payton as head coach. Winston was solid in New Orleans’ Week 1 victory (23-of-34, 269 yards, two touchdowns, no picks) but he suffered four back fractures in that game. He tried to tough it out, but even though he threw for a lot of yards, he was clearly laboring and the Saints didn’t crack 20 points in two consecutive games. Winston has been on the sidelines since Week 4.

For those of you young whippersnappers who have never dealt with real back pain before, it’s stifling. A sore knee or ankle results in a limp. A sore back can get so bad that breathing deeply becomes painful. Per a report from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, complications from a 2020 ACL surgery resulted in Odell Beckham Jr. tearing it again in Feb. 2022 during the Super Bowl. It’s early Nov. 2022 and OBJ is reportedly ready to play professional football. Complications from Steve Kerr’s 2015 back surgery left him unable to stand and coach a basketball team for nearly three months.

Andy Dalton has been the man behind center for the Saints since Week 4, and they have only won two more games. New Orleans had a chance to make themselves serious players in an NFC South with every team under .500 if it had won last night against the Baltimore Ravens. However, the offense was ineffective in a 27-13 home loss. If not for a fourth-quarter 41-yard touchdown pass in which Marcus Peters and Chuck Clark forgot that only a referee can stop a play, it’s highly unlikely that the ‘Aints would have reached double digits.

Still, New Orleans hung around in the game for much of the night even without a productive offense which begs the question: What could this offense have been with Winston?

Sure he threw 30 interceptions in his last full season as a starter with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019, but he also tallied 33 touchdowns, over 5,000 passing yards, and averaged 8.2 yards per attempt. There was a lot of coaching turnover when he was with the Buccaneers. The Saints provide much more stability. The head coach for most of Winston’s time in Tampa, Dirk Koetter, was supposed to be a quarterback whisperer. The Bucs never made the playoffs, and Koetter would end up the second of three head coaches Winston would have. Koetter is currently Boise State’s interim offensive coordinator.

New Orleans’ current head coach, Dennis Allen, has been with the franchise since 2015. Offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr. has held that role since 2009. For the first time in Winston’s career, he got to experience organizational stability. No systems or philosophies were going to change. Winston was not only going to inherit a strong roster with the Saints, but get to work with people who weren’t in jeopardy of losing their jobs.

At 3-6, the Saints need to start thinking about drafting a young quarterback who they can more easily mold into the player they want him to be.

If Winston doesn’t get hurt last year, maybe he picks up where Brees left off and the team wins the NFC South. He could’ve possibly powered that offense through the playoffs and maybe even won a Super Bowl by knocking off a Los Angeles Rams team that, while talented, was far from perfect.

Winston’s whole NFL career could’ve taken a different trajectory if it didn’t get halted by these injuries. Instead, he and the Saints will likely end this season with no clear answer on what either of their futures holds.

I guess if you were sentenced to hang out with one NFL owner, Jim Irsay might be atop the list. He at least has an identifiable love of music, which gives him something in common with most other people. We have no idea what most owners do for fun, aside from probably making their gardeners fight to the death in front of their golf buddies for money. Unless we’re talking about Dan Snyder, whose idea of fun, I can only assume, is to devise a list of enemies that is almost certainly 75 percent made up of the girls who rejected him in seventh grade. There’s at least something you can talk about in the company of Irsay and not have him look at you like you’re some kind of subterranean creature. You might look at him that way, but he is probably capable of an actual conversation. Yes, he’s almost certainly unhinged and disconnected from reality like any other billionaire, and likely would punt your dog into a river for an extra $20 just like the rest of them. There’s just one plane to which you might relate.

Or at least, that’s what I thought before I saw Monday night’s presser after he fired his coach (and it’s clear that he fired Frank Reich and not GM Chris Ballard). Now I’m not sure Irsay can have a conversation with anyone other than the voices in his head and at nothing less than full volume. In case you’d like to watch the whole thing, but bring a raincoat:

First off, it’s uncouth at best to call a presser during Monday Night Football, and gives the appearance you might be trying to duck all the attention that you’ve earned coming your way. The national eyes at least are distracted. Speaking of appearances, Irsay looks more and more like a beer coaster the bartender forgot to clear away.

Irsay then spent the first three minutes of the presser lauding Reich and his accomplishments, pointing out how successful he’d been, and then took his first shot at… well, everyone, declaring that “it doesn’t matter what your opinion is” of Reich, which might lead one to wonder why the fuck he fired him in the first place.

Irsay then turned his attention to Jeff Saturday, describing him as “fully experienced.” This will be news to a variety of ESPN personalities who might now think they’re in line for a head coaching job in the NFL. Does Saturday know their playbook on either side of the ball? Is he coming in with his own? These are not questions Irsay has considered, because he’s just feelin’ the groove, man. Hey, I sold programs outside the United Center for eight years, guess I’m ready to own the Bulls.

Irsay then goes on to declare that Saturday can be a great coach because he blocked a variety of guys when he was playing, and then tells a couple of jokes that only he gets that push him further and further into looking and sounding like Dr. Weird. Which only got better as he compared the situation to Don Shula, and then claimed the game hadn’t changed in the interim. He then claimed it’s a simple job, which must be why there’s like four guys who remain good at it for more than a handful of seasons.

There was some word salad about integrity and the people we are, so now time for an Irsay sampler:

Jim Irsay Arrested

Jim’s Secret Life

Irsay comments on concussions

Some other nuggets:

“I’m not asking anyone to do anything I haven’t done.” Colts fans can look forward to Coach Irsay somewhere around Week 13, then.

“There will be an interview process after the season for a new permanent coach. This is for eight games, hopefully more.” Well, which is it?

“…(when he hired Tony Dungy) then we wanted a winning coach, a playoff winning coach.” Apparently now he just wants a drinking buddy. 2023 season ticket deposits are due any day now, I’m sure.

“I’m glad he doesn’t have any experience. They’re afraid. They go to analytics.” Ah, there it is. This is never too far down the block for a codger, is it? This ignores that going by analytics, as it were, remains the brave choice given how many old football men (kinda like Irsay!) scream and yell whenever a coach does. If Saturday ever goes for it on fourth down before the last two minutes, Irsay is going to shit out a chicken squeezed into a Jim Beam bottle.

“We were glad he was available. And he has tons of experience.” He was a fucking TV analyst. Who was beating down his door? And you just said you were glad he didn’t have any coaching experience! This sounds like some sort of theory of the world being put forth in the parking lot of a Dead show. Which it probably was at some point.

By the way, all of this was in the first eight minutes.

With Al Davis not around anymore, and his kid only play-acting as the rogue owner, I guess Irsay feels it’s his time to shine. His latest audition makes him a shoo-in for the role.

Barnes stormin’

Anyway, here’s Scottie Barnes making Nikola Vucevic and Alex Caruso look like they were scenery in a 4th-grade play:

A few weeks ago, giving up on Justin Fields as a viable starter would have been warranted. He was abysmal and with a draft stocked with talent at the QB position over the horizon, who could have blamed the Chicago Bears for developing a wandering eye? In the first six games of the season, the Bears forward passing attack had 1920 Decatur Staleys vibes to it as Fields was barely reaching double-digit attempts or completions per game. However, since Chicago’s offense entered REM sleep and put the nation to bed in a Thursday Night Football snoozer against Washington in Week 6, the Bears have been reborn.

In Sunday’s 35-32 loss to the Miami Dolphins, Fields continued his reawakening. Early in the third quarter, Fields announced himself by teleporting 61 yards to the endzone on an electrifying run in which a sonic boom was probably emitted as he accelerated past the outer shell of the Miami Dolphins defense. Overall, Fields gashed the Dolphins defense for 178 yards, shattering Vick’s two-decade-old record.

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since Michael Vick’s 173-yard ground assault on the Minnesota Vikings. Fields, 23, could barely support his own head on Dec. 1, 2002, when Vick shot like a cannonball through the Vikings’ defense, as would-be tacklers crashed into one another en route to setting a new quarterback rushing record.

Against a Dolphins’ defense that stifled Josh Allen, Fields accelerated a trend that began in Week 6, when offensive coordinator Luke Getsy began designing runs for Fields at a growing rate. Since then, the results have been promising. In the past three weeks, the Bears have torched scoreboards for 94 points, after tallying only 93 points in the first six games of the season. and the passing game has developed a rhythm.

Thanks in part to Fields’ 178 yards on the ground, his modest 123 yards on 17-of-28 passing, and a rating over 100 for the second week in a row is a revelation for a franchise that has been devoid of quarterback stability since the 1940s. Fields will frustrate with an off-target throw every now and then, but the Bears are a must-see since their midseason offensive adjustments.

Given the paucity of receivers at Fields’ disposal, Fields’ legs contributing to a potent ground game should have been a no-brainer early on. Fields’ 61-yard was the result of improvisation, but his eight rushes for 68 yards on designated runs, zone and power runs

Fields’ first passing touchdown came after he rolled out and utilized his foot speed to remain out of Jaelan Phillips’ grasp long enough for Cole Kmet to create separation and waltz into the endzone. Fields’ second touchdown throw was to Kmet off of play-action and his third was a result of him uncorking a back-shoulder dime to Darnell Mooney in the endzone.

Yet, for all those positive signs, their receiving corps still let them down when they needed it most. On a fourth-and-10 to keep their final drive alive, Fields’ escaped pressure and flung a precision pass on the run to Equanimeous St. Brown. The pass slipped between the receiver’s hands. Watching Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle continue their revision of NFL record books further illustrated the disadvantage Fields is at.

The Vick-era Falcons had a similar defect that went unaddressed for Vick’s entire tenure, which forced them to lean even further on the NFL’s top rushing team. Vick’s Falcons receivers Peerless Price, Brian Finneran, Alge Crumpler, and Michael Jenkins probably sound like an upgrade over the Bears wideouts. Likewise, Chicago’s ground game leads the NFL in yardage, first-down rushes and second in yards per carry.

The acquisition of Chase Claypool is Chicago’s attempt to address their quagmire at receiver. In Week 9, he only recorded two receptions while getting in sync with a new team and scheme, but nearly made a game-changing play on a jump ball, were it not for a missed defensive pass interference on Dolphins cornerback Keion Crossen. Fields is a long way from piloting a high-octane, must-see passing attack, but the Bears finally appear to have the gears moving.

BYE-maggedon concludes on Monday night with a game of great importance. The Baltimore Ravens need a win to remain one game ahead of the Cincinnati Bengals for first place in the AFC North. A victory for the New Orleans Saints at home would give them the same record as the Atlanta Falcons and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Sunday wins by division foes have made victory in this game even more paramount for both teams. A loss for either now leaves them vulnerable with less than half of the season remaining.

The Ravens, and starting QB Lamar Jackson, have won two consecutive games and appeared to be well on their way to their first division championship since 2019. They have already defeated the second-place Bengals whose best player, Ja’Marr Chase, is on injured reserve for a minimum of two more weeks with a hip injury. Also, the Bengals got smoked last Monday night by a division rival, the sub-.500 Cleveland Browns.

Sure the Atlanta Falcons were a game ahead of the Saints for the NFC South lead, but we’re talking about the Falcons. A franchise with a unique capability to lose in the most excruciating and ill-timed ways. It happened again during yesterday’s early slate of games. Tied 17-all, with 34 seconds remaining against the Los Angeles Chargers, Austin Ekeler fumbled, and Ta’Quon Graham scooped up only to drop the ball on the ground 19 yards later without being touched. The Chargers recovered and went on to kick the field goal.

That knocked the Falcons out of first place, and the Saints currently hold the tiebreaker against them. Unfortunately for the Saints, Tom Brady sprinkled what water he hadn’t already guzzled from the Fountain of Youth on that elbow, leading the Buccaneers on a game-winning touchdown drive that staved off a fourth consecutive loss for Tampa and stopped the Saints from reaching first place.

Off of a short practice week, the Bengals disposed of their Week 9 opponent by doing everything besides literally placing them in a dumpster. Following the Christian McCaffrey trade, the Carolina Panthers appeared rejuvenated after a win against the Buccaneers and an overtime loss to the Falcons. The Bengals moved as fast as possible on Sunday afternoon to destroy any good feelings in the Panthers organization by taking a 35-0 halftime lead. This victory pushed the Bengals record back over .500.

Now instead of this Monday Night Football matchup being for dominant positioning in a division, it has turned into a win that is necessary to set the table for the back half of the season. The Saints have a monster schedule remaining with road games against the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles. While the Ravens schedule is much less grueling, they have quite a few divisional matchups remaining, including a Week 18 rematch with the Bengals — in Cincinnati.

With both teams dealing with injuries to key players, this is the type of win that can buy them some time while they try and get back to full strength to make that late playoff push.

An intra-conference primetime matchup at a rowdy Superdome against two teams with legitimate chances at a division. Not a bad way to end a week with six teams on a bye.

“What is going on in Utah?” was the Brian Windhorst query that ruled the summer as the Jazz’s CEO of basketball operations Danny Ainge jettisoned Rudy Gobert to the Minnesota Timberwolves for a boatload of first-round picks through 2029. The answer was Utah gutting their roster and Quin Snyder walking away so the team would be free to pursue the top pick in 2023. The idea was their roster would put them in pole position for the slalom race to the bottom of the NBA hill.

Defensive specialist Royce O’Neal was traded to Brooklyn for a first-round pick. In August, Beverley was traded for Talen Horton-Tucker, one of the most overpaid 21-and-under assets in the NBA. In a league where shooting is at a premium, Horton-Tucker is one of the league’s worst, drilling a paltry 27 percent of his triples over the span of his first four seasons.

Utah completed their roster deconstruction in September when they closed the saga with a trade with Cleveland that surrendered Donovan Mitchell. What got overlooked in the fervor over the potential of the 2023-24 Jazz were the veteran rotation players they also acquired in these trades and the impact they’d have on this season. In the Gobert trade, they hustled Malik Beasley, Walker Kessler, Jarred Vanderbilt and Patrick Beverley out of Minnesota. In the Mitchell swap, Utah collected Lauri Markkanen, rookie wing Ochai Agbaji, guard Collin Sexton, plus three unprotected first-round picks (2025, 2027, and 2029) and two pick swaps (2026 and 2028).

Ainge’s controlled demolition of the Jazz was their lottery ticket for Victor Wembanyama. With that summer haul, Utah’s special tank unit was supposedly assembled. Instead, the charges Ainge set off appear to have sparked something else. The Jazz are 8-3 and the entire league is pondering “what is going on in Utah?” for entirely different reasons. The happy-go-lucky group Ainge cobbled together is playing without a true star, playing high-quality basketball under rookie head coach Will Hardy and possesses a camaraderie that the Mitchell-Gobert Jazz lacked.

Through 11 games, the Jazz lead the Western Conference in wins and boast the second-best winning percentage in the conference. They also led the NBA in pyrrhic victories. Much to the chagrin of Jazz fans, Utah is playing its way out of the Wembanyama race they entered this summer.

This season’s Jazz are the George Costanza Opposite method personified. Ainge attempted to assemble a unit capable of losing at a prolific rate, but in a shocking twist, unlocked a selfless group that is playing well above their pay grade. Like Costanza, they’re fat and unemployed, live with their parents, and proud of it, but it’s inexplicably working for ‘em.

Everything Ainge has done of late works out the opposite as he intended. In Boston, Ainge’s patience on the trade market wore everyone thin as he passed on delivering a bonafide superstar who could deliver them on the path to title contention. In 2018, he infamously passed on pairing a Kawhi Leonard rental with Kyrie Irving. Instead, the Raptors took a gamble and Leonard erupted for one of the most awe-inspiring campaigns in modern NBA playoff history.

Ainge plucked Brad Stevens from Butler in 2013, observed him win 55 percent of his games in eight seasons, hit a brick wall in the Conference Finals twice, then Stevens replaced him as president of basketball operations and reversed the Al Horford trade as the Celtics advanced to the Finals that eluded Ainge for the past decade.

Ultimately, Utah’s pyrrhic victories could have a residual effect a year on their roster a year from now. Eventually, the Western Conference’s elite teams will activate their pilot lights and the Jazz will be cooled down significantly. The play-in game is a nice consolation prize, but Ainge will have difficult decisions to make during the Trade Deadline. If they continue along their current pace or are packed into the center of the Western Conference playoff herd, another clearance sale may be in order.

Ainge probably should have thought of arranging a yard sale earlier for some of their rotation players he didn’t intend to host permanently on Utah’s roster. A majority of the rotation Utah has deployed have proven to be too experienced, and too team-oriented to be the nucleus of a bottom-three squad. Especially when compared to the raw, neophytes populating Oklahoma City, Houston and Orlando’s lineups on a nightly basis. On the plus side, they’ve raised their trade value.

Microwave-scoring Sixth Man of the Year Jordan Clarkson is averaging 5.3 assists a night, nearly double his career-high, during a contract year. Malik Beasley is a marksman who has been unconscious from deep. Collin Sexton is a brash and bold combo guard who can heat up quickly off the bench. Lauri Markkanen is putting his offensive scoring repertoire on display.

Ironically, two of the teams Utah acquired first-round picks from this summer, Brooklyn and Lakers are on the tumultuous, losing trajectory Ainge desired. At 4-6 and 2-7 respectively, the Nets and Lakers are on an opposite course. L.A. surrounded LeBron with some of the worst shooting lineups of his career and Brooklyn is doing the opposite of Golden State and embracing calamity and are now in Utah’s place in the NBA’s basement. As the NBA’s law of equivalent exchange dictates, the basketball gods giveth and they taketh away.

For those teams, and there are many, who need some help at wide receiver, Odell Beckham Jr.’s services are available.

He tore his left ACL for the second time in less than 18 months during the Super Bowl. Since then, Beckham has claimed on social media that he actually tore it weeks earlier, and NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport has reported that there were problems with Beckham’s 2020 surgery and that this second one will “extend” his career.

Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer reported on Sunday that Beckham will be fully cleared to play by the end of this week and that he expects there to be a big bidding war for his services. For teams who want to be in the mix, it will require a strong multi-year off for a player who just turned 30 years old, and had the same ACL operated on in less than two years. He was not happy with what the Los Angeles Rams offered him during the offseason which is why he is still a free agent.

While no one knows exactly how he will look upon a return to the field, the last time he was on it he looked like the best player in Super Bowl LVI. Here are some teams that should be willing to take a chance on Beckham showing that he can again be that player.

After the thrilling early games in Week 9, what a dud for the big late-afternoon game to be the Los Angeles Rams vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Two teams with roster deficiencies that haven’t been enjoyable to watch at all this season.

For most of the game, both teams’ offenses were largely ineffective. Until the fourth quarter, Cooper Kupp’s 69-yard touchdown catch was the only play that resembled the two offenses that fought in January for an appearance in the NFC Championship Game.

Part of the problem was the pass rush. Both Matthew Stafford and Tom Brady spend much of the game under duress from Vita Vea and Aaron Donald, respectively. The pocket is quite the hostile place when those two bulldozers are moving offensive linemen

However, at the end of the game, Brady summoned enough strength from his 45-year-old body to keep the Buccaneers in the race for the top spot in the putrid NFC South, in which every team is currently under .500.

The Buccaneers actually shouldn’t have needed to sweat out the result of the game. On their penultimate drive, Brady was in rhythm, and completed three consecutive passes to Scotty Miller. He looked for him in the end zone on 2nd and goal and threw a perfect pass to an open Miller, who dropped the ball. The Bucs would eventually turn the ball over on downs.

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A disappointing drive like that is capable of knocking the wind out of a team. Stomping on spirits that were already on the ground.

Brady decided to go back to Miller on the Buccaneers’ final drive of the game, and was rewarded. He caught two more passes including a massive 3rd-down conversion. On a field that Miller shared with Chris Godwin and Mike Evans, the 2019 sixth-round draft pick was the Buccaneers’ most important skill position player.

Maybe Brady needed an unheralded pass catcher to step up to make him feel like he was young again, providing a reminder for what it was like during the early years with the New England Patriots. Back then, Brady won a lot of ugly offensive performances off a defense that kept the game close, and he would make all of the necessary late plays with competitions to Kevin Faulk, Deion Branch, Jabar Gaffney, or whoever happened to be open.

Whatever sealed the deal, that embrace that Brady launched at Buccaneers offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich showed that even though the legend has now thrown for more than 100,000 combined regular season and playoff yards, he really needed that win yesterday.

The Buccaneers had lost three games in a row, and had managed to put up 25 or more points once this season. Much of Brady’s energy had been spent cursing at his offensive line and smashing tablets. Also, his personal life is falling apart in front of the world, with rumors about his marriage on the rocks turned out to be true as both he and his wife Giselle have confirmed that they are in the process of getting a divorce.This season was looking like Brady had returned to the stage for one too many encores.

Sunday was more of the same with Brady getting tossed around and the Buccaneers struggling all day to move the football. Then, for a few minutes, that old Brady magic returned and helped keep the team in a good playoff positioning.

However you may feel about Brady, that guy needed a win yesterday. As much as it improved the Buccaneers playoff hopes, it provided much more help for a 45-year-old man who, for a fleeting moment, got to bask in the high of something going right for once.