August 08, 2018
We lost, but if we didn’t, we definitely would’ve won.
That sounds like something Yogi Berra would've said, only it's not. It is, however, essentially the point Saints running back Alvin Kamara was trying to make in a long feature story published by Bleacher Report on Wednesday when he said that his team, which lost in the divisional round of the playoffs to the Vikings, would not only have beaten the Eagles and advanced to the Super Bowl, but they would've "beat the shit" out of the Birds.
Seriously, he said that.
Of course, the Saints didn't beat the Vikings, instead losing in heartbreaking fashion, on the last play, as time expired, after erasing a 17-point deficit. For much of the game, it didn't look like the Saints belonged, but that changed quickly in the second half, and had the game been another 15 minutes longer, they may have actually won.
Only it wasn't, and they didn't.
Still, Kamara, who recorded over 1,500 yards total and 13 touchdowns in his rookie season, is certain that New Orleans would've beaten a team that played arguably its best game of the season against Minnesota. Here's an excerpt from Master Tesfatsion's in-depth feature on Kamara:
"It's a certain point where you f**king just do everything could do, and shit still don't go your way," Kamara says about the game dubbed the Minneapolis Miracle. "That's how I felt about that game. I felt like we did everything. We came all the way back, and then shit just happened like that. That's like some one-in-a-million-type shit.
"I couldn't even be mad. I was mad, of course, but it was like how does that even f**king happen? That's not even real. It's almost not realistic, like what the f**k?"
Kamara says he got over the game fairly quickly but was frustrated to see the Vikings allow 38 unanswered points in a blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles, who defeated the New England Patriots two weeks later in Super Bowl 52.
"We'd beat the shit out of [the Eagles] cause we was rolling," Kamara says. "If we won [versus Minnesota], I knew nobody was gonna stop us cause we came all the way back."
The conversation gets Kamara excited for the upcoming season. He described 2017 as an "experiment" year for the Saints, and he believes everyone in the locker room knows what they are capable of accomplishing in 2018.
"We know what the standard is," Kamara says before pausing for a few seconds. "So, yeah, f**k Minnesota." [bleacherreport.com]
Sorry, Alvin. You can play the what-if game all you want, but no one was beating the Eagles on that day.
And yes, I watched "The Slammin' Salmon" recently.
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