A few weeks ago, some dope on a blog mentioned in his camp preview that Tyler Palko stood a better chance of recording a top-40 pop hit single about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart than he had to stick on the Saints regular season roster.

The identity of that idiot blog dude isn’t important. Seriously, it’s not, so don’t even bother trying to figure it out.

Suffice to say that that guy woke up this morning with his left eyebrow still raised, and could only assume that it had stayed that way all night. Very interesting stuff last night. Very interesting indeed.

Of course, the urge amongst the gen pop seems to be to go ahead and name Der Kommissar the second string QB immediately. Easy there, cowboy. It’s patently absurd for a contending team to have an undrafted rookie for a second string QB. Palko fans need to sit tight and just be happy that he slathered himself in a thick coat of turk repellant last night. Let’s see where it goes from there. 

Meantime, this was the kind of preseason loss that a guy can really get behind. The Saints played really well last night, like night and day from last Sunday. Urge to kill: falling. Cake of Tremendous Power: rising.

How about Kevin Dudley? Oh sure, it was just one catch for 18 yards, but it sure seemed to get Charles Grant’s full endorsement. Keep this guy away from Gordon Jump’s bicycle shop, I’d like to see more of him.

Hopefully that first drive last night pounded another nail into the coffin of the ridiculous myth that Jack Hunt can’t catch. It boggles my mind how underappreciated that guy is.

Just about everything through the air last night was aces, in fact. Lance Moore looked good. Terrance Copper looked good. We got a little taste of Eric Johnson, who is really going to be one hell of a factor when the regular season rolls around. Even Meachem got his hands on a couple!

Sure, they didn’t put the ball into the end zone they way you’d hope. But I’m hoping that what we saw in the second drive with Drew’s pass to Devery in the end zone is indicative of what we’ll see a lot more of in the regular season.

I could be wrong, but my perception late in the year last year was that the Saints started to take the attitude that the “red zone” started around the 30 or even the 40 yard line. For some reason, the team just seems to be more comfortable striking at the end zone from farther out, and it seemed like they started to embrace that late last year.

I don’t expect to see too much of that in the preseason, but I hope that that pass to Devery was an indication that the team plans to continue going into that “let’s score right now” mindset outside the 20 yard line in the regular season. They certainly have the weapons.

Defensively, the front four really seemed to turn it up a few decibels. Charles Grant was downright manic. Kendrick Clancy and Antwan Lake did a good job inside. It’s hard to complain about pitching a shutout for the first 29 minutes, 20 seconds.

That being said, “serviceable” still seems to be about as far as I’m willing to go in describing the defense. If the Saints can average three sacks per game in the regular season like they’ve done so far, that’ll be fantastic. But I’m still seeing too many passing downs where the QB has too much time to throw. Just my opinion, of course, feel free to disagree. The pressure seems inconsistent to me. And the defensive backfield still makes it just a little harder than it should be to get to sleep at night.

Maybe I’m overreacting a little. I mean, after all, the Bills only had 123 yards passing last night, and most of that came after all the starters were out. But Buffalo is not gonna be confused with an offensive juggernaut either. Hell, they were 30th in the league last year in total offense.

Still, it was a giant leap in the right direction on both sides of the ball. It was a fun game to watch, and really, when it comes to preseason, that’s about all we can hope for.

So far, so good. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear that Coach Payton has this all scripted out. A swift kick to the balls last weekend, a huge dose of humility. Followed by an affirmation that, yes sir, you bet your ass this team is gonna bring it when it counts, and a few pleasant surprises from down on the depth chart.

Hopefully Coach Payton is planning for another kick to the balls next weekend, because it’ll be T.J. Ho-shma-zode (Championship) and the Bengals. I suspect that one won’t be nearly as fun to watch as this one was.