Saturday It’s floated around that Jeff Saturday said the team was outcoached in New Orleans and that a veteran of his standing saying that was the first major sign of a fracturing locker room. On a day when Jeremiah Jones of Fox 59 in Indianapolis said not a lot of guys appeared in the locker room, Saturday was there.
“I didn’t say that,” Saturday said before clarifying his feelings. “I said that as a team we were outplayed, we were outcoached and there was nothing that we did better than they did yesterday. I’ve been in this game way too long to try to lay the blame on anybody else. No coach put pads on, we did. We didn’t play well at all, and there’s no scapegoat in this. If you can’t look at all 53 guys and know that we all screwed it up, and we all got beat as bad as you can get beat. There are not enough fingers to go around, so we all share the same burden here and the same blame. We’ve got to get it fixed and go play better next week.”
Caldwell It sure seems Saturday’s comments merely echoed Jim Caldwell’s post-game message. “I just didn’t think I did as good a job for them as I should have done,” Caldwell said. “Obviously, that was with the way in which we played, that’s my responsibility. I think that’s probably what he’s referring to more so than anything else, my statement in that regard.”
Saturday also took on the issue of effort, which is always something fans and analysts run with after a one-sided game.
“I don’t know, it’s always hard for me to judge people’s effort,” Saturday said in comments distributed by the team. “I’ve heard of that a long time in my career about effort, but the bottom-line is that we’re in a wins and losses game. If you don’t win, then it really makes no difference. We didn’t play well. No matter if we played with effort or didn’t play with effort, we got beat up and got beat. I’ve never met anybody on our team who hasn’t given his 100 percent, and tried as hard as he possibly could. I know I do. Down 62-7, you’re still trying to do the very best you can, because it’s on tape. Somebody’s evaluating you, and some fan who has followed you your whole career is watching to see if you’re the same guy. I think that’s the same for every player in this locker room. We give it the best we can, but that’s not good enough to win games.”
Things are bad in Indianapolis, absolutely. I don’t know what happens next in the unraveling. But I believe going 0-16 is nearly as difficult as going 16-0 and that no one is doing any losing on purpose.
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Pete Thamel is the national college sports reporter for The Times, where his primary responsibilities are college football and basketball. He is in his sixth season with The Times, witnessing everything from the Bush Push at Notre Dame to Ian Johnson's sideline engagement at the Fiesta Bowl to Mario Chalmers's long 3-pointer to give Kansas the national championship. Before joining The Times, Thamel covered college sports for ESPN.com, ESPN The Magazine, The Syracuse Post-Standard and The Daily Orange. A native of Ware, Mass., Thamel graduated from Syracuse University in 1999.
Connor Ennis has been a staff editor in the sports department of The New York Times since November 2006. Before coming to the Times, he worked for The Associated Press, where he was a supervising editor on the national sports desk in New York. While with the AP, he covered the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and the 2006 World Cup in Germany. A native of Dallas, Pa., he graduated from Syracuse University in 2000.
Ray Glier is a freelance reporter who, in addition to The New York Times, contributes to USA Today, AOL FanHouse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald and Unboundary, a strategy/communications firm based in Atlanta. Glier is a graduate of West Virginia University.
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