Cha ching, bitches! And welcome back to the party, Saints. Isn’t beating the snot out of chumps a hell of a lot more fun than batting down hail marys? Yeah, I think so too.

Fun game. Oh sure, most of the first half bordered on excruciatingly boring, and the outcome had been decided by about midway through the third quarter. But the game was chock full of firsts, and those entertain me.

Obviously, the Saints won their tenth in a row for the first time in human history. The 31 point margin of victory was the largest yet this year. All three interceptions were by first-timers (Vilma, Jenkins, Reis Nuts) and David Thomas became the 18th(!!!) Saint to score a touchdown. Scotty Badass got his first sack and forced fumble, and Leigh Torrence chipped in with his first (half-)sack. Courtney Roby got his first reception as a Saint, and Pontchartrain Meach had himself his first multi-touchdown game.

It was also the first time all year where the Saints had no interceptions and no fumbles. (They had no turnovers vs. the Giants, but Meachem did put the ball on the carpet once, which the Saints recovered.) Nice fuckin’ job there in practice, gentlemen. Way to identify the beast and slay the shit out of it.

Yes sir, that right there was just what the doctor ordered, in pretty much every way. And it even kept consistent with the overriding theme of the season: Mindbogglingly Bizarre.

Anybody care to explain why this performance came outdoors, on a sloppy field, sans Tracy Porter and Reggie Bush, against a division opponent who had scored 62 points in their previous two games, instead of a week earlier in a dome, with Porter and Bush, against a team that hadn’t scored more than 20 all year?

Nevermind. Screw it, no explanation needed. The whole 2009 season pretty much defies explanation anyway. It’s gonna take years to wrap our minds around what’s been going on here, no sense in overthinking it now. Suffice to say that it appears the Saints have gotten their groove back. And just in time. Say, who’s next week’s opponent anyway? Anybody know? Gonna have to go look that up.

Anyway, do resist the urge to diminish the gravity of this performance based on the general shittiness of the opponent. It’s about how the Saints played, and they played as well as they have at any time this season.

Oh sure, they didn’t put up 48 points. The defense failed to score. The stats have been gaudier than they were Sunday. It was a methodical, businesslike dismantling of an inferior opponent. Nothing particularly unexpected happened, and aside from the margin of victory, nothing about this game is really gonna stand out as particularly notable. It’ll probably be one of the least-rewatched games of 2009.

But it was huge. This is why they call games like this tune ups. And boy did the Saints tune up.

I mean, we’re talking about a 31-point division win on the road. A game the Saints finished with a grand total of one healthy corner. And the lone healthy corner is a rookie. A game in which reserves were all over the field all day, not just in garbage time. And they weren’t just getting by, they were making plays. Dominating.

I mean, Drew Brees was little more than a footnote, for crying out loud. Bell, Frenchy and Lynell Hamilton(!!!) accounted for a whopping one fewer yard than Drew had passing. 29 passing plays, 33 rushing plays (not counting Brunell’s 3 for -3 from the Victory Formation.) (Oh, and speaking of that… how cool is it that the Saints’ head coach isn’t Les Miles? High five!)

They continue to play through the attrition that handicaps every team, every year, even the great ones. It’s an old team sports cliche, "somebody new steps up every time we think we’re horribly fucked." Something like that, anyway. And when by late in the season you’re about ready to punch the next guy who says it right in the dick because you’re sick and tired of hearing it, that’s when you know you’re looking at an honest to goodness by god championship contender.

And that’s why you can rest assured that this game is gonna pay dividends like maybe no other game so far.

They can talk about "depth" until the cows come home, but it’s a whole different thing to actually have a practice squad guy at DT, a safety at corner, a rookie at the other corner, your journeyman sixth wideout catching his first pass, a tight end you traded a 7th round pick to acquire in preseason going 4 for 66 with a TD, your fourth and fifth options returning punts, and yet despite all that, to win a road game against a division opponent. By 31.

A "trap game" no less. They had to have known that half the fanbase would have forgiven them without a second thought had they layed an egg, given the circumstances. At the same time, they easily could have fallen victim to the "Oh shit, here we go again" mentality which surrounds… well, pretty much the whole fucking franchise, even to this day. It would have been nothing more than par for the course. And 9-1 is pretty fuckin’ cool, so just shake it off and move on, right?

Wrong. Not this year. Nothing about this year is even on the same planet as par for the course.

The Mighty Patriots are in for a world of hurt Monday night. A world of hurt.