Peter Marshall:  Paul, what is the primary problem that develops with men's zippers?
Paul Lynde:  Rust.

Ah yes, our annual reminder that there's a reason the term is "midseason form" and not "preseason form." I waited until Sunday at 1, the only proper time to watch Saints football, to actually sit down and watch what the internets had led me to believe was a vomit-inducing horror show Thursday night. When it was over, I was left thinking "That was it? That wasn't so bad." Hell, to tell you the truth, I'm not even sure the bad outweighed the good.

Oh sure, Sean Payton and Gregg Williams are gonna be hyper-critical and accentuate the negative. Of course they are. They're coaches. It's preseason. That's just what they do. Hey, you give too much lip service to the whole "Calm down, we haven't played a game since February 7" thing, and before you know it, Mike Florio has Message Board Guy convinced that you're still dancing pantsless on pool tables and not giving half a shit what happens from now on. Message Board Guy, of course,  is gonna be hyper-critical and accentuate the negative as well. Because, well, that's just what he does.

But I fail to see what was so bad about the Saints' performance. Sloppy? Absolutely. But surely that came to no surprise to anyone, right? Surely nobody was expecting the Saints to look like a well-oiled machine after two weeks of camp. "Sloppy" ought to be a given this early.

Sure, the two consecutive 3 & outs on their first two possessions weren't exactly fun to watch. Nor were the four punts on five first half possessions. The 20 play, 86 yard touchdown drive that ran 10:01 off the clock was pretty sweet, but it was tainted a bit because it was aided by a defensive penalty on a fourth down. Disappointing? Sure. Just ask Drew Brees. But a portent of impending DOOOOM? Hardly. Seriously, if you're worried about this offense, seek professional help.

Defensively, the pearl-clutching over the run defense continues. But last year, the Saints allowed 4.5 yards per rush. Thursday night, the Patriots gained 3.6 yards per rush. Maroney, 3.75 yards per rush. BonJovi Green-Acres, 3.09 yards per rush. The Patriots only had two runs of 10+ yards, and their longest rush of the night was 13 yards. The Patriots accumulated 125 total rushing yards, less than 3 yards over the Saints' (admittedly bad) average rushing yards allowed per game last year. And they had to run the ball 35 times to get there.

Look, I'm not gonna sit here and insult your intelligence by trying to convince you that the Saints did a good job against the run Thursday night, or that there's no reason for continued concern. And before you go to the trouble of pointing it out, I'm aware that comparing last year's regular season averages against statistics from a single preseason game doesn't exactly produce rock-solid evidence. I get it. I took Message Board Guy's advice and WATCH(ED) THE GAME(!!!!) and I wasn't exactly impressed either. All I'm saying is that it's not like they got horribly gashed or anything.

For all the hand-wringing over Julian Edelman handing the Saints' pass defense their asses, overall, the Patriots produced 6.6 yards per passing play. Last year, the Saints' defense allowed 6.9 yards per passing play. Edelman went 6 for 90. I suspect that part of the problem here is that nobody's ever heard of Julian Edelman. But hey, nobody's ever heard of Adrian Arrington either, and he went 4 for 87. These things happen in the preseason.

The Patriots accumulated 204 net passing yards, one fewer than the Saints did. Overall, they outgained the Saints by a grand total of 24 total yards. The Patriots produced an average of 5.0 yards per offensive play. Last year, the Saints' defense allowed an average of 5.5 yards per offensive play.

Oh, I know what you're gonna say. If it weren't for the Patriots returning pretty much every single kick for 40 or 50 yards all damn night and playing on short fields, the numbers would have been far more horrifying. Maybe so, but I could just as reasonably claim that if it weren't for those same short fields, the Saints might have won that game by 7 instead of losing it by 3. (Not that the score matters in the least, of course, aside from a huge affect on the popular perception afterwards.)

Again, I'm not gonna sit here and try to convince you that the Saints played well overall. They didn't, we all saw it, and I'd be an idiot to claim otherwise. It wasn't particularly fun to watch, and at times it was downright painful. But at the end of the day, I just don't think they were nearly as shitty as the postgame reaction would indicate.

Special teams being the notable exception, that is. Now they were mindbogglingly shitty. 194 combined punt and kick return yards allowed. On the bright side, the Saints had 198 of their own. So, yeah, there's that. But half of 'em came on a single return by a guy who's not gonna make the team. So that's not really important. What's important is that the Saints allowed a 40 yard punt return, and Devin McCourty averaged 37 yards on 3 kickoff returns, including a long of 52. Guh.

Is it just me, or is Greg McMahon getting dangerously close to boarding the Midnight Train to Gary Gibbsville?

Meantime, look, that's what these games are for, right? They're warmups. They're the joke answers that come before the real answers. Like when Rose Marie quips about how much fun it'd be if someone were to attempt to rape her, or Demond Wilson feigns outrage over having drawn yet another question about watermelon, or Paul Lynde strongly implies that there are only a handful of people, places or things that he hasn't stuck his cock in at one point or another. (Man, by today's standards, that was one fucked up show.)

When you haven't lost a game (glorified forfeits excepted) since last December, and you've only lost 3 of your last 19, and you've spent the last six months celebrating a championship (high five!) getting reacquainted with the sting of defeat is probably a damn good thing. And I can't think of a better time to do that than when it doesn't count.

They won't say it, of course, but I suspect that Sean Payton and Gregg Williams were quite happy that Thursday's game went down like it did. I do disagree with the notion that it'll be used as a "manufactured crisis" or anything like that. I think we're past that now, it's no longer necessary for Payton to manufacture crises. Keep doing that and you're gonna start drawing eyerolls eventually. This isn't an upstart team trying to overcome four decades of history and scale the mountain for the first time ever anymore.

What it was, was a reality check. And everybody needs those from time to time. That the Defending World Champions got one Thursday night might very well end up being the best thing that could possibly have come of it. At the same time, there's a big difference between a reality check and a humiliating kick to the crotch. Thursday night was the former, but in my opinion, it most certainly wasn't the latter.

To the contrary, hell, it happened at arguably the perfect time. It came without significant injury. And if that weren't enough, the Saints might very well have found themselves a brand new weakside linebacker, a brand new strongside linebacker, a brand new Quarterback Killa, a fifth wideout (no, seriously, for real this time!) and further hedged against being up shit creek if something were to happen to one of their kicking specialists.

By golly, Thursday night might have been the most productive day so far for the 2010 Saints.

Say hello to your brand new starting weakside linebacker, Jonathan Casillas. 10 tackles, 1 sack Thursday night. After the game, Casillas was overheard walking around the lockerroom muttering "Oh shit. Probably shouldn't have done that. Gregg Williams is gonna be gunning for my ass now."

Gregg Williams pretty much immediately confirmed JC's fears by announcing that he's about to go all Iron Sheik with it and do it old country way to keep him humble. Can't have this chump going all Hollywood on you after one preseason game.

Meantime, we here at moosedenied recently learned that the Spanish word casilla translates to "a compartment, box, or square." So, for now, considering his newfound star status, moosedenied would like to take this opportunity to saddle Casillas with the nickname "Hollywood Squares." Nobody tell Joe Horn, okay?

While Casillas settles into his new position at the center square, Junior Galette continues to not only secure a spot on the regular season roster, but quite possibly a decent amount of regular season playing time as well.

The fine folks at Blackened Out inform us that the word galette refers to a kind of rustic, crusty French cake or pastry. A specific example of one type of galette would be… a king cake. Holy shit! It's meant to be!

We here at moosedenied consider Krustycakes to be a perfectly cromulent nickname, but we're not sure that's gonna stick. Hell, for that matter, I'm not sure I'm convinced just yet that Galette himself is gonna stick. But for now, I'll be damned if he doesn't look the part.

And then there's the perennial preseason message board beast, Adrian Arrington. Part of me has been pleading to the gods for three years now to get this guy the fuck out of my face already. And to be honest, at this point, I'm still pretty much sick and damn tired of people trying to shove the smell of his greatness up my nose.

But hey, you go 4 for 87 and you've got my attention. And to follow that up by not immediately going on IR? Nice. Golf clap. Tell you what, do that again next week and I'll seriously consider stroking my chin and/or raising my left eyebrow. Whadd'ya say there, champ, we got a deal?

I don't know, just seems to me like the Saints actually did pretty damn well for themselves last week, all things considered. Besides the predictable widespread overreaction to a less-than-dazzling performance which should have been expected in the first place, what am I missing here?