If you’re like me, and God help you if you are, a funny thing tends to happen to you the morning after the last Saints game (or LSU game, as applicable in any given year.) You stumble out of bed, shake off the cobwebs, and it hits you like a ton of bricks.

HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK! HAVE I REALLY BEEN SCREWING AROUND FOR THE LAST THREE MONTHS??? HOLY SHIT, THERE CAN’T POSSIBLY BE THIS MUCH WORK TO DO.

You may ask yourself "Am I right? Am I wrong?" You may say to yourself "MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE???"

And you panic for a few minutes. You toss your blogging top hat and monocle (what, don’t you use one?) in the closet and damn them to hell (for a while) for putting you in this situation. Because it’s always the fault of the inanimate objects. You swear off showers and shaving as a needless waste of time, strap on your pee-bag contraption, bust out the bottle of Trucker’s Choice alertness candy, hook up the coffee I.V. and brace yourself for 60 days or so of putting forth the kind of effort that better people put forth on a regular basis.

Then, eventually, you find yourself breathing again. You check the date, check it again just to make sure you saw that right, and you think to yourself… "Hell, that was totally worth it. So how long until football season? And where the fuck did I put my blogging monocle?"

So… um… hi there. I’m gonna go ahead and indulge myself for just a second in the thought that you might have missed me. Although I can’t say as I have a clue why that would be the case. Can’t promise that I’m gonna be able to start doing this again regularly anytime soon, as the battle to neutralize the effects of my own winter hibernation from responsibility is far from won. But I might very well be within snorkeling distance of the surface. And in the meantime, I wanted you to know that it’s not intentional, not from lack of interest, nor have the Saints beaten me into submission. I’ll be back.

Meantime, thankfully, our friends Pico, Ashley the Inimitable, Nola Chick, Saintseester and Mr. CL Ten haven’t had such issues, and have been steadily keeping their respective trains rolling right along, to my delight. Brian Fike recently put on a new coat of paint on over at his place, and one can only hope that this is indicative of his having remembered that "Hey, I’ve got a blog, don’t I?" Heh. The downside of that is that "Suck it, bitches!" will scroll off the front page. (Psst… Brian… think about working that into your overall layout.)

Lost is kicking a ridiculous amount of ass right about now.

When I grow up, I want to be Tony Bourdain.

As for the Saints, I’ve been keeping a far-more-casual-than-usual eye on the message boards, and the more things change… the longer I remain pissed off. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was. And look where my hand was.

Time isn’t holding us, time isn’t after us. It’s Asante Samuel, jackasses. One S in Asante, one S in Samuel. If there were two of him, you might be able to get away with talking about Asante Samuels. What hell-spawned synaptic malfunction is responsible for people’s propensity to add an S to the end of a last name where it does not belong? Somebody needs to write a paper on this. Perhaps Samuels Taylors Coleridges.

The tropes are out in full force as well. Funny how after 2006, when Fred Thomas was being burned in effigy on every street corner, the fact that the Saints were 3rd in the NFL in passing defense didn’t stop the braying masses from demanding corners.

A year later, after Jason David accomplished the mind-numbingly-unlikely feat of compelling those same braying masses to pine wistfully for the "good ole days" of Fred Thomas, now all of a sudden "it all starts upfront" and the Saints ought to tackle the problem in the defensive backfield by not acquiring corners. Watch out, you might get what you’re after.

Cool babies, strange but not a stranger. It’s funny how subconsciously, reflexively contrarian we humanoids can be sometimes. Can’t stop the run? Must be the defensive backs’ fault. Get burned deep on a drive-by-drive basis? Must be because the defensive ends aren’t holding up their end. Lose 42-41? Damned offense didn’t get it done today. Coach should have run the ball more often. Lose 10-9? Fire the defensive coordinator! I’ve got a girlfriend who’s better than that.

People get so attached to their own concepts of how "it should be done" this time of year. Probably because there’s no game coming up this weekend to totally undermine their assessments. What tends to get lost is that in the big picture, there is no one right way to do it. There never has been, old-school NFL truisms notwithstanding. Ravens or Rams, either way can work. Ground Chuck or Air Coryell. Blitz or base. Cover 2 or man. There are all kinds of ways to win football games.

The common denominator is that you need good football players. And if your corners suck, you need corners. Sure, you can compensate for weaknesses by scheming. But only so much. Personnel upgrades are never a bad thing, but upgrading the strongest unit on your defense because "clearly it all starts upfront" and some other team happened to win a championship with pedestrian defensive backs last year, while not "overpaying" to replace the worst corner in the league is Haslett Logic. (Whoa, did I just type those two words in succession?)

It always happens this time of year… the overthinking. We outfox ourselves. It can’t possibly be as simple as getting better players to replace the weak links in the starting lineup. Anybody can do that. There’s gotta be a better way that only football geniuses like me can comprehend.

• "Draft defense"
• "Fill needs in free agency and draft the best player regardless of position"
• "Speed kills"
• "Draft football players, not athletes" (OMG that guy just ran a 4.28!!!)
• "It all starts upfront"
• "Run Cover 2 and the quality of your corners is completely irrelevant"
• "Blitz blitz blitz!!! Every down! Works every time! There’s no downside whatsoever!"

And for the love of God, never, EVER "overpay" in free agency. Every player in the league is worth a specific, objectively-calculated amount of money over a specific number of years. Exceed that amount at the risk of being eternally damned as an incompetent boob. This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around.

"What do you mean you had to offer the guy an extra million because we really, REALLY needed an upgrade at that spot, the pickings were slim, and he wasn’t all that excited about coming to the area??? You jackass!!!"

"What do you mean Asante Samuel is worth more to the Saints (Jason David and ?) than he is to Denver (Champ Bailey and Dre Bly)??? NO! He’s worth what he’s worth, and that’s $9,234,798.00 per year over six years with a team option for a seventh. Duh! Anybody who knows the business of football knows that."

And we only want guys who are dying to come here anyway. But they have to be Pro Bowlers. And high-character guys. And you can’t give them a penny more than their "objective monetary value." (And if you were really good, you’d get them for less than that.) They can’t be over 25. No injury issues please.

Don’t get into a bidding war! But don’t be cheap! Don’t sign the big name, but be advised that if you sign a mid-tier guy and he gives a mid-tier performance this fall, it’s on your head for "not trying harder to address the situation." I mean, for fuck’s sake, can’t you find a guy nobody’s ever heard of who’s about to go on a string of 6 straight Pro Bowls and sign him for minimum wage? Because if you can’t, I’m not sure you’re fit to run this operation. Don’t displease me, or you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack.

Ah yes, another offseason on these here internets. Quite possibly the only thing capable of compelling me to get back to work in an effort to reduce my level of stress and frustration. Which is good, because I need to get a few steps ahead by fall if I plan to slack off again for a solid three months. And really, what choice do I have?

Meantime, see you again soon, blogosphere compadres. Keep on keepin’ on. And excuse me while I slip back under the rocks and stones from whence I’ve temporarily crawled. I hear there’s water underground. Bitchin’.