Sports Takes Sure To Be Wrong (Although We Know The Majority Of These Will Be Right): Saints are this far from Super Bowl

The distance between the Caesars Superdome and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, the site of this year’s Super Bowl, is approximately 1,726 miles according to Mapquest.

But for the Saints, the distance between them and the Super Bowl is a lot closer than you think in a lot of categories.

Here is a breakdown:

Front office distance between New Orleans and Las Vegas: Gallup, New Mexico. The best thing the Saints front office has going for it is that GM Mickey Loomis has put together a championship team before. New Orleans has picked up some solid players in the draft and usually makes good decisions in free agency.

Head coach distance between New Orleans and Las Vegas: Amarillo, Texas. Dennis Allen isn’t the worst coach in the NFL, but he isn’t the best coach either. He is somewhere in between. He needs to do a better job of controlling his players. He offsets that by being one of the best defensive coaches in the NFL.

Offense distance between New Orleans and Las Vegas: Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Saints offense performed well down the stretch last season behind QB Derek Carr, who has shown his toughness. It is time for the team to like oft-injured receiver Michael Thomas go via free agency. It also needs to make Taysom Hill a full-time player instead of the part-time offensive novelty act that he has become the last few seasons. Some help on the offensive line would be a plus as well.

Defense distance between New Orleans and Las Vegas: Flagstaff, Arizona. This is a defense capable of winning playoff games, because it has decent players on the line, at linebacker and in the secondary. It was mostly good all year except for some hiccups in some close games.

Special teams distance between New Orleans and Las Vegas: Wichita Falls, Texas. Outside of All Pro Rashid Shaheed, this unit left a lot to be desired. The punting and placekicking have to be better and more clutch to get this team to the next level.

Here are some more “Sports Takes Sure To Be Wrong (Although We Know The Majority Of These Will Be Right)”:

This weekend’s Pro Bowl is a joke that is not worth watching. How dare someone lose two or more hours of their life to watch a skills competition and flag football game. I suggest searching for some old “Hazel” reruns on YouTube.

Analytics is football is just another way for coaches to make dumb decisions and have a little bit of a covering. It has taken common sense out of the game when it comes to fourth down and scoring decisions, right Dan Campbell.

I don’t think Lamar Jackson choked in the AFC Championship game. He just made some dumb decisions in key moments. The majority of the credit for his poor play should go to the Kansas City defense.

I like this Oklahoma City Thunder team. They have a lot of weapons. They might be worthy of making the Western Conference finals.

I get CBS’s Tony Romo has been bad as a color analyst, but if you are watching games to listen to his “Romo-isms,” shame on you. It’s the game that matters. Having said that, Romo is the worst lead color analyst of a network in the NFL.

The best NFL color analyst is ESPN’s Troy Aikman.

And finally…

Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes is the man. We should consider ourselves honored to watch him play. His will to win and leadership is amazing. I would never bet against him or his team for the next three to five years.