Saints vs. Packers: 5 Things Learned from Season Opener

The season has finally started, and it started with a bang. The New Orleans Saints were scrappy at Lambeau Field, never giving up no matter how far ahead the Green Bay Packers surged.

But this game wasn't just about the win/loss record of the Saints or the Packers. It wasn't just about ending the yearly drought grown to epic proportions by the lockout.

It was about what we can expect. It was about what we have learned this tumultuous offseason.

Mostly, it was about damn time we had some real football!

Lesson No. 1: I Guess the Lockout Did Hurt Play After All

As I predicted in another article, this meeting between two offensive powerhouses would not fail to disappoint in the scoring department. I also implied it would probably be a defensive letdown.

Six of one, half a dozen of another.

The lockout drastically shortened the amount of time teams could practice together as a unified whole, with teammates and coaches and facilities and training staff and Adam "Pac Man" Jones punching his grandmother. Common sense told us this would have an effect. Pundits and sports personalities tried to tell us otherwise.

Common Sense: 1, Pundits: 0

The 42-34 finish to the Packers/Saints game is just a taste of things to come this weekend. In fact, I will go so far as to predict that the first week of football in 2011 will be the highest-scoring Week 1 in the history of the game.

The Packers and Saints boasted top-10 defenses in 2010, and both were shredded by the opposing offense. How do you think lesser teams will fare?

Get ready to cheer when your team has the ball and groan when the opponent does. This won't be the only game with a combined score over 60.

Lesson No. 2: The New Kickoff Rule Isn't so Bad

I've said it in comments, now let me say it here:

The new kickoff rule will make things more exciting, not less. Teams are already used to booting the ball to the back of the end zone on kickoffs, and thus they have deemphasized the return coverage.

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but what do you do when Devin Hester or Josh Cribbs decide they want to run it back, anyway?

I'll tell you what you do: you brick your shorts if you're the other team.

Randall Cobb tied the record for longest kickoff return in his first ever game, and he will not be alone in taking it to the house. Get ready for more than a few return specialists to decide they want to pull a Cobb (sorry for the visual).

This goes both ways, too. Fans had better prepare for Speedy McReturnoid to take it from seven yards deep in the end zone and get plowed on the 5-yard line. Exciting, right? I never said you would always like the excitement. But don't fret; Speedy is going to have a career year, and many thousands of fantasy football jerkfaces will win whatever it is they get out of their contribution toward ruining the game of football.

The return game just traded quantity for quality with the new kickoff rules, and I for one am looking forward to it.

Lesson No. 3: Stop Pretending the Running Game Doesn't Matter

Yes, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers combined for 731 yards and six touchdowns through the air. Brees and Rodgers are premier passers; did we expect otherwise?

However, both teams ran the ball better than you'd think, and the running game turned out to be pivotal.

New Orleans combined 21 carries for 81 yards—a pretty anemic turnout. Proponents of the contemporary aerial game point to this sort of thing as evidence that the running game isn't as necessary as it once was.

I couldn't disagree more. The running game was vital to the Saints, particularly on two fourth-and-short situations. The first, a failed conversion attempt on the Packers' 7-yard line, resulted in a 93-yard drive for a touchdown for Green Bay.

That touchdown? On the ground.

The second was a play that the game hinged on. With nothing left on the clock due to a defensive penalty, the Saints had a shot on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line. If they punched it in and converted for two points, they could send the game into overtime. Instead, Mark Ingram was stuffed and the game ended.

The Packers (who were considered one-dimensional throughout 2010 after the injury to Ryan Grant and the rookie James Starks unfit-for-duty) didn't fare much better, cobbling together 103 yards on 27 carries. Of course, those are the stats. The tape tells a different story, with a Green Bay unit ahead and looking to grind the clock down.

Unspectacular but time-consuming runs narrowed the window through which New Orleans might have been able to survive the game. In fact, they very nearly ran out of time. Meanwhile, Green Bay had struck paydirt twice on the ground: once in the aforementioned 93-yard drive and once on a 17-yard rumble by second-year player and 2010 playoff hero James Starks.

Look, I'm not saying the run game hasn't changed, and I certainly don't mean to imply that the running game is fading into nothingness. I'm merely suggesting that you don't need an Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson or Arian Foster to benefit from the ground attack.

Both Green Bay and New Orleans used a running-back-by-committee strategy, and both benefited. Starks and jack-of-all-trades John Khun put 12 points on the board for the Packers, and zippy, slippery scatback Darren Sproles was electrifying as a screen pass/punt return wizard, forcing the Packers to adjust to him.

Lesson No. 2: Defense Wins Championships

Cliché, right?

But it's for a good reason. Offensively, the Packers and Saints are almost identically talented. Rare exceptions on one side (Jermichael Finley) are balanced on the other side (Pierre Thomas, Mark Ingram, Darren Sproles).

Both teams have so-so to solid offensive lines. Both have elite quarterbacks who can gobble up an unsuspecting defense like they're Nicole Richie and the defense is made of Vicodin. Both have a solid receiving corps and no doubts about their starters.

The difference between the two is on the defensive side. The Packers were/are simply deeper and more talented than the Saints on defense.

Of course, looking at the stats suggests otherwise, especially in the passing game (the strength of Green Bay's defense). But as I've already stated, the high-flying, high-scoring game is owed to a lack of cohesion and preparedness on the part of both teams' defensive units.

So, both defensive units turned in sub-par performances. On what, then, do I judge the defenses? Well, even in a sloppy game like this, truly gifted players and units always come up with something—some present with a pretty bow—to hand to the offense.

On the Saints' opening drive, Packers safety Nick Collins struck the ball from the hands of top man Marques Colston, and Green Bay recovered, marched down the shortened field and scored. On the Saints' final drive, rookie running back Mark Ingram was dropped before he could reach the goal line, ending the game.

A defense doesn't have to be stifling to be effective. It doesn't always have to "win championships" by yardage strangulation. Opportunistic defenses like Green Bay's or the Chicago Bears' can marry flawless execution to ball-hawking for great effect. But if you eliminate the execution from the equation, good defenses simply unleash their ball hawks. Thus, Drew Brees finds 419 yards and three TDs worth of room through the air, yet Nick Collins forces a fumble and Clay Matthews, Jr.makes a goal-line stand to end the game.

There's only so much time to try to outscore each other; at some point, those other 11 guys have to make a play.

Lesson No. 1: 100 Contentious Offseasons Are Better Than 1 Missed Regular Seaon

Even as the opening kickoff sailed through the air, I was already back in familiar territory.

After all the vitriolic rhetoric, the he-said/she-said/he-said again—only much, much more loudly—the dueling articles and rampaging comment sections, football has arrived.

I can talk to my neighbors again. Bereft of arguments about the Tampa 2 versus the West Coast Offense, we were forced to seek other topics, and I spent much of my time wondering if absence would indeed make my heart grow fonder of these people.

I have something useless and relaxing to do on Sundays again.

I can go back to mercilessly ripping fantasy football and its remora of stat junkies and big-arm fetishists.

I was home.

Watching Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers duel through the air with 110-plus passer ratings, racking up yards like Brett Favre after finding out Dan Marino still had a record to break, I was reminded of everything I like about football:

The chess match, the battle of wits between coaches and coordinators. The gifted athletes among athletes, making plays no one else could. The surprises, the disappointments and the knowledge that every week, I will be surprised again.

If you were to face the choice between trudging through the CBA talks all over again or scuttling a season, you would either choose the former or perjure yourself like a seasoned White House Press Secretary.

It's time. Time to set aside the speeches, the rants and the pleas we've heard all summer. It's time to shake out your favorite team's gear and reverently don it for game day. It's time to start the DPOY and OPOY discussions and watch as they escalate into a tooth-and-nail fight to the metaphoric death.

It's time for football. Are you ready?