Leelanau Sports Guy at sportspig.com

This is a non NFL/Detroit Lions post, but please bear with me.

You may have noticed I create a ton of internet content by my involvement with my own site, TWFE, along with Bless You Boys, The Bless You Boys Podcast and The Knee Jerks Podcast. Which is why the ongoing push by Congress to enact SOPA (Stop Internet Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) legislation scares the bejebus out of me.

Is piracy a problem? Yes, but a small one.

My writing has been used without my permission in the past, and will be in the future. It’s the price of doing business on the internet. But I don’t think I’ve lost much, if any, revenue from it. I think of it this way. The more my content gets in front of people, the more readers and listeners I ultimately get.

All of which is why I’m not convinced by the likes of the MPAA and RIAA and their ridiculous claims piracy has cost them untold billions upon billions in revenue. My guess is they pull these numbers out of their asses in order to protect what are obviously outmoded business models. You give people what they want, at a reasonable price, and make it easy to get…they’ll buy it.

SOPA and PIPA are what early 20th century buggy manufacturers would have wanted to stop the proliferation of the automobile. It’s simple. If you don’t move forward, refuse to innovate, it’s not the pirate’s fault if you die.

Using SOPA and PIPA to stop online piracy is the equivalent of using a chainsaw when a small scalpel would be appropriate. Chainsaw, Hell. It’s the nuclear option. It’s an Atomic bomb when it comes to the internet and world wide web. And the vast majority of career politicians who have no idea of how the web works (or even what it is) are more than happy to set the detonator…which will be pushed by big corporations, to their immense benefit.

There are already laws in effect to handle copyright infringement. The most well known being the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which also has major issues, but is actually the lesser of evils). At least the DMCA doesn’t dodge a little thing called due process, which SOPA and PIPA will completely ignore.

We need to stop big media from writing clueless legislation which will destroy the world wide web. Contact your Congress critters and tell them to make themselves useful by creating legislation to help with the deficit/jobs/economy/health care/foreign policy/name your cause, anything other than kowtowing to big corporations trying to protect their 1950′s business model.

For more information on the evils of SOPA and PIPA, check out the following links: Wikipedia, Google, Ars Technica, Reddit.

They will give all the information you need as to the evil of SOPA/PIPA and links on how to contact your reps in DC. You’ll be glad you did.

As hard as it might be to believe for the die hard Saints fan from way back when, many current fans of this team probably may not even remember more than a single losing season. Someone who started following the team 6 years ago in 2006, for instance, when Sean Payton first became Head Coach and Drew Brees became the starting quarterback, would be in that very category of such people. The Saints have gone 62-34 since Payton and Brees arrived in New Orleans, and that 64.6 winning percentage is tied for the 6th-best over that span. Even if a recently converted Saints fan goes back twice as long as that, to the start of the 2000 season, they would still only remember 3 out of 12 losing seasons for their favorite NFL team.

But, truth be known, from the Saints‘ inaugural season in 1967 to as recently as the end of the 2005 campaign, New Orleans actually owned the third-lowest winning percentage in the NFL. At .403, they trailed only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at .392 (established in 1976, 9 years after the Saints) and the Houston Texans at .281, who had been in existence for only four years, with the worst all-time winning percentages at that time.

The Detroit Lions originally began their existence in professional football as the Portsmouth Spartans based out of Portsmouth, Ohio in 1929 as an independent professional team. They were one of many such organizations in the Ohio and Scioto River valleys back in those early days of professional American sports. In 1930, however, the Spartans formally joined the NFL as other area independent teams folded because of the Great Depression. The Spartans were unable to survive in Portsmouth, then the NFL‘s smallest city, despite their initial successes within the framework of the NFL. The team was sold, moved to Detroit and was renamed the Lions for the 1934 season. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Lions of late represent the modern day mediocrity that the Saints used to lay almost sole claim to in the NFL, prior to New Orleans‘ first playoff win in 2000 that is. Since the Detroit Lions‘ initial induction into the league in 1934, although they won a total of 4 “NFL Championships”, the last of which was in 1957, they remain to this day one of 14 teams never to win a Super Bowl Championship and one of only 4 teams never to even play in one. For those who did not know, the first Super Bowl was held in January, 1967. Championships prior to that were not Super Bowls. Detroit also holds the NFL record for “Most Losses, Season / Longest Losing Streak in a Season” with 16 during the entire 2008 season.

In terms of this particular matchup between the 10-6 Detroit Lions and the 13-3 New Orleans Saints, to be played out on Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 7:00 PM Central Time in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, both teams are functioning at a particularly high level.

The Saints are winners of their last 8 games in a row, owners of the best current winning streak in the NFC and tied with the New England Patriots for the longest winning streak in the NFL this season, as well as 8-0 at home in 2011/12. Meanwhile, Detroit has won 4 of their last 5 games, dropping only their week 17 meeting with the Packers in Green Bay after securing their first playoff berth since 1999 in week 16 with a victory over the San Diego Chargers.

New Orleans is favored by as high as 10.5 points over the Lions, but Detroit must not be overlooked due to their explosiveness in the passing game behind the leadership of 3rd year quarterback Matthew Stafford, the third of three quarterbacks to pass for over 5,000 yards this season, and their uncanny ability to come from behind and win games.

Detroit is also healthier as a team than they were when these two squads butted helmets in week 13 of the regular season. Star defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh was serving the first of a two game suspension for his indiscretions during the Lions‘ game against the Packers in Detroit a week earlier when these two teams first encountered each other in 2011, but he will be full go this time around in the Wild Card weekend of the playoffs. With a much more complete compliment of defensive linemen, the Lions should present a much stiffer challenge to New Orleans in the Superdome this Saturday night.

Rewind a full year to this same time in 2011 when the Saints were heavily favored to win in the Wild Card round of the 2011 NFL playoffs over the hosting 7-9 Seattle Seahawks, and this latest rendition of the team from the Big Easy is in much better shape in the running game for the 2012 playoffs. Lat year, both Pierre Thomas and Chris Ivory went on IR prior to that meeting with the Seahawks in the playoffs and then both Reggie Bush and Julius Jones fell victim to injuries in the game that sat them on the bench early. New Orleans limped through the rest of that contest with only one healthy RB in FB Heath Evans. Despite the team’s movement of Mark Ingram to the Injured Reserve list just this week this year, the Saints still have 3 perfectly healthy and well-performing running backs with Darren Sproles, Thomas and Ivory moving ahead to this meeting with the Lions.

By this season’s end, the Saints were tied for 4th in rushing with 4.9 yards per carry and 6th in the league with a 132.9 yard per game average. As far as overall offense, New Orleans led the NFL this season.

To the contrary, though the Lions owned the 5th best ranked overall offense in the NFL during the regular season this year, their running game was ranked 4th from worst in the league.

Defensively, the two teams appear at first glance to be a lot more evenly matched with the Lions being ranked 23rd and New Orleans at 24th overall. While both teams do give up their share of yards to opposing offenses, if you break it down into points per game allowed by each defense, they begin to separate themselves quite a bit more. The Saints rank 13th in points allowed with 21.2 per game while Detroit ranks 23rd with 24.2 ppg.

All in all, the overall success of the passing games could be the final determinant in this matchup if it does come down to a shoot-out. In such a situation, I would have to give the edge to the current recipient of the Offensive Player of the Month award in Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints offense. Home field advantage will also be a huge factor that will allow the host team to prevail in the end.

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Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Opening Statement from HC Sean Payton:

There’s no injury report today so here’s just our roster transactions. We signed G Eric Olsen from the Redskins practice squad. He’ll be in number 70, so he goes to our active roster. We placed RB Mark Ingram (28) on Reserve/Injured with his toe. We signed LB Nate Bussey (59) to our active roster and placed LB Will Herring (54) on Reserve/Injured. From a practice squad standpoint, we signed WR Andy Tanner and LB Derry Beckwith, who replaces Nate Bussey‘s spot on the practice squad and then released QB Sean Canfield. Today was a little bit lighter just with the short week. We’ll kind of get back to a little bit more of a normal routine tomorrow.

Lions at Saints Wednesday Injury Report – January 5th, 2012:

Detroit Lions:

Did not participate: WR Calvin Johnson (Achilles)

Limited participation: CB Aaron Berry (shoulder), S Louis Delmas (knee), DT Nick Fairley (foot), S Chris Harris (back), CB Chris Houston (hand, knee), CB Alphonso Smith (foot), RB Kevin Smith (ankle, knee)

Full participation: DE Cliff Avril (back), DT Corey Williams (hip), DE Willie Young (ankle)

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New Orleans Saints:

Did not participate: LB Jonathan Casillas 52 (knee), TE John Gilmore 89 (toe), WR Lance Moore 16 (hamstring)

Limited participation: LB Jonathan Vilma 51 (knee)

Full participation: S Jonathan Amaya 40 (shoulder), S Malcolm Jenkins 27 (neck), WR Robert Meachem 17 (knee)

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My personal prediction for this meeting between the North and the South is that the Southern team will defend its Dome with the help of the local fanbase along with a ground/air attack combination resulting in a 41-24 New Orleans Saints victory over the Lions from Detroit.

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