Drew Brees tonight was the first of perhaps several QBs this season who will pass Dan Marino’s single-season passing yardage record. Tom Brady could realistically pass Breesus next week and render all the crazy celebration in the Superdome hilariously moot. Oh man, it’s just like ’98 with McGwire and Sosa except thankfully not baseball and America doesn’t have to pretend really hard that something is capturing its imagination.

As the record breaking approached, I wondered whether ESPN would go out of its way to embarrass themselves with overwrought graphics like they did with Favre’s 500th TD pass the year before.

It’s closer than I figured, but The Gunslinger’s is still a bit more ostentatious. And you can tell that ESPN thinks Favre has a bigger moment because they have their branding all over it. Sorry, Breesus, you’ll have to be more of a self-aggrandizing turd to get on Brittfar’s hype level.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am weak. My weakness is strong. I let my hopes get stoked that the Giants could come into the Marcedes-Benz Maybach Music Superdome and give the Saints a semblance of a game, but it ended up being only slightly less lop-sided than the 62-7 New Orleans blowout of the Fat Humps back in Week 7. Next Sunday, we’ll be forced to live blog the Suh-less Lions against the Saints on SNF just because the alternative is Chargers-Jaguars on Monday night. And Detroit is gonna lose by 40. Such is the live blog.

Gruden is very amused by people on crutches, btw, especially if they’re Sean Payton. In the waning minutes of the blowout, he had some poor production assistant bring him a pair to goof with in the booth. It’s not only visual puns that Gruden is after. He also clumsily described Payton as “up and at ‘em” right as the camera cut to Sean on crutches.

Then again, Payton does nothing to discourage this by using the crutches as a celebration prop. In the best of all worlds, we can impale Mike McCarthy on one in the NFC Championship Game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Movie executive: All right, Sean. I’ve already gotten some details on your movie, but I want to hear it from you. Make me see your movie. Lay it out for me.

Sean Payton: The project’s called “The Xbox Kid.” Main character is a poor kid in the Lower Ninth Ward, lost both of his parents in Katrina. Now he’s living with his aunt. He’s really down and out. Getting into a lot of trouble. So his aunt starts forcing him to go to church, but he’s not really into it. As a gag he prays for the Saints to win the Super Bowl. He gets this dream, this vision that he takes the team there himself. He wakes up, thinks nothing of it. Plays some Madden on XBox. Comes to see that the actual Saints game on Sunday plays out just as his Madden game did. He chalks it up to coincidence, but then it happens the same the next week. That triggers it for him. He gets excited, starts telling people, but no one buys it.

So he writes an e-mail to the Saints coach, laying out everything to him, even how the next game is going to play out based on his Madden game. And it happens. The coach is amazed, meets up with him, almost becomes like a father figure. Teaches him some fundamentals of the game, so the kid gets even better at Madden. Together, they lead the franchise to its first-ever Super Bowl, bringing hope and distraction to the people around him. Who does the team end up playing? Of course, the horrible cheating juggernaut Patriots. Word gets out about this kid being our lucky charm, so Bill Belichick breaks into his house and steals his XBox. Kid can’t find it, can’t get it back. In fact, Belichick smashes it to pieces. It’s a very Angels in the Outfield-like end scenario. The coach is distraught. The team is shaken. But then they discover they had the Breesus within them all along and pull it out in the end.

Executive: Interesting.

I like it. Really, I do. In fact, I was already giving it some thought and I think I have the perfect actor in mind for the part of the kid.

[Into intercom] Hey Tracy, send him in.

Read the rest of this entry »