Given the multitude of prison exercise-yard adjectives one may apply to the Falcons-Saints rivalry (edition No. 91 on Sunday at the Superdome), the local team was going all understated and erudite this week.
“This one always tends to be fairly enthusiastic,” quarterback Matt Ryan said.
“Any time these two groups get together it’s a very spirited game,” one of the quarterback’s pocket protectors, guard Justin Blalock, said.
He added: “It can get contentious out there at times. I wouldn’t expect anything different (Sunday).”
Even receiver Roddy White, who has been known to use Twitter with the subtlety of a runaway bush hog, was taking the high road. Saints cornerback Keenan Lewis tried to get in a little verbal shadow boxing earlier this week when he said the Saints were preparing a funeral for the visitors this weekend. He did not say whether it was going to be a full-scale New Orleans jazz processional or simple cremation, but his point was clear enough.
And White, so often a trophy quote on Saints week, did not rise to the bait.
“That ain’t enough bait for me, know what I’m saying?” he responded. “I’m a big fish. I don’t bite on that bait.”
Scripting Sunday as a funeral is not so far-fetched, nor is it an entirely bad idea. It is time — past time, honestly — to put one of these teams out of their misery.
Don’t let the Falcons’ low-key assessments mislead. These are tense, uncertain times all around the NFC South. Its four teams have been reduced to a common national punchline, all of them seen as ill-suited to January as a magnolia blossom.
Three still survive in this state of contemptuous contention — the Saints (6-8), Carolina (5-8-1) and the Falcons (5-9). There are 18 teams in football with better records, a third of them to be left in the ditch while one of these three ne’er-do-wells gets a spot in the postseason. It’s hardly fair, but, hey, this is football, not Sweden.
The combination of losing yet contending must breed a very different kind of frustration/desperation — “frusperation,” if you will.
Look no further back than a couple of weeks ago, as Carolina was drumming New Orleans, it merely took Panthers quarterback Cam Newton breaking out his harmless Superman act to set off a brawl. These frusperated NFC South players are performing on a ragged edge as they try to make some sense of the nonsensical.
The tiniest of slights could set off another such scene in the Superdome on Sunday.
“I think that when you play each other so much that you have a dislike for each other. Sometimes just the passion of the game gets involved, and little things set you off. I think that’s what you’ve been seeing,” the former Falcons-turned-Saints linebacker Curtis Lofton said.
Lofton was a central player in the dust-up with the Panthers and no doubt will bring powder keg tendencies to this game as well.
Yes, the Panthers, the Falcons’ season-ending opponent on Dec. 28, are very much a part of the NFC southern discomfort, having really beefed up their status as objects of scorn the past few years. That, after all, was the team that Ryan not so politely order off his field after a victory in 2012 (sorry, kids, can’t repeat the exact words).
But one hostility-fest at a time.
The Falcons-Saints rivalry is a singular hate.
It is the rivalry that re-opened the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina (a rousing Saints victory).
It is the rivalry that inspired an egging of the Saints’ bus while it was still on the Hartsfield-Jackson tarmac (2012). The rivalry that moved Michael Vick to flash a middle finger to his own crowd after one loss (2006).
It is the rivalry that always seems to produce excruciatingly close finishes. In nine of their past 12 games, the teams have been separated by six or fewer points. Hard to believe that this season began with such promise for the Falcons, when they clipped the Saints in overtime.
And the fact that New Orleans got its Super Bowl championship while Atlanta continues to pine for one is a matter of grave civic embarrassment.
Now, add to all that the unique theme of Sunday’s game: The battle for control of the NFL’s Island of Misfit Toys.
“Our playoffs started on Monday,” White said, splashing importance all over a meeting of sub-500 teams.
The joint will be rocking far more than it should be for opponents of such modest accomplishment. Said kicker Matt Bryant, preparing himself should he need to kick two 50-plus-yard field goals within the final two minutes, as in the season’s first game: “Even more ramifications, probably going to make it even louder in there.”
At least if little has gone the Falcons way this season they are allowed for one more week to maintain the illusion of relevance. Sure it makes coming to work easier, being 5-9 and still having a goal to reach and a rival in the way.
“Whether we were playing them in this situation or not, this game would be tough and close,” linebacker Paul Worrilow said. “But now we’re both fighting for the same thing regardless of records, both fighting for a playoff spot. For both teams it’s a must-win.”
This is one of the oddest storylines yet to a Falcons-Saints game — trying to rescue a shred of respectability within a division overrun by ridicule.
It will be the work of irritable men, capable of producing some of the worst blood yet between rivals.
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