Or really lucky. In a rare non-baseball related post, I’d like to relay to you my frustrations on Sunday’s Saints loss. The Saints, if you didn’t know, needed a win to clinch home field throughout the playoffs. So you figure that even though they are guaranteed to have a bye (I think, who knows how these things work), they’d still whup up on the terrible TB Bucs. Instead, despite coming out to a 17-0 lead in the first half, despite being up 17-10 with 3:00 to go, they still lost. They allowed a punt return TD to let the Bucs tie it up, then drove down the field and miss a 37 yard FG to end it. In OT, they simply sucked, allowed the Bucs to march down the field and kick 47 yarder. Which is apparently easier than a 37 yarder.
Why is this important? Because of the Washington Post survivor pool! If you don’t know how a survivor pool works, it’s pretty simple. Every week you pick a team to win. If they win, you move on to the next week. If they lose, you are out of the game. The only other rule is once you use a team once, you can never use them again. So you have to pick a different team each week. Simple enough, but tough to pull off – you get one wrong and you are out. I’m not sure the numbers, but over 700 people were still in it after the first week. I am not much of a football guru (not much of a baseball guru either judging by my annual picks, but that’s not the point) so I didn’t expect much. Yet week after week, I managed to win. Down to 500 people, 200 people, under 100, under 50.
Then this week came along, with few good teams left in my repertoire and only TWELVE contestants left in the whole game. Including me. So as you already know, I picked the sure-fire 13-1 team against the pitiful 2-12 Bucs. You know, the same Bucs team that even lost to the Redskins? Yeah, it all ended in disappointment. And to think, I was going to post this week asking the Nats fans to help me make my final pick. Instead, I write to give you a word of advice. Something that people have known for decades, yet I only just figured out: Never, EVER bet on the Saints.
And of course, from 12 to 10 remaining teams, but I don’t get to move on. From the teams that I had left, all I needed to do was pick Pittsburgh (easy to say now), or the Jets, or… New England. I knew saving NE and NO would be useful, I guess I just mixed up the weeks. Damn you New Orleans, you were so much fun for my bachelor party, but you betrayed my trust today!