WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. -- The first weekend of the NFL playoffs began as scheduled last January, the first contest beginning mid-afternoon on a Saturday.
Televisions tuned in, the Arizona Cardinals visiting the surprising Carolina Panthers, who had won the NFC South despite a losing overall record. Panthers quarterback Cam Newton threw two second-half touchdown passes, leading his team to the home victory as more than 21 million people watched on television -- the third-largest audience to ever watch an NFL game on ESPN.
Zach Strief, though, found something else to do. He couldn't bear to watch. The New Orleans Saints' offensive tackle knew how close his team had been to reaching the playoffs. The Saints didn't take advantage, losing their final five home games.
"A frustrating disaster," Strief said months later.
Last year the NFC South was the league's most disappointing division: plenty of talent and firepower, but none of its four teams seemed worthy of a playoff appearance -- to say nothing of a home playoff game, automatically awarded to a division winner.
But the Panthers won their last four regular-season games, including a 41-10 thrashing of the Saints that Strief still hasn't forgotten.
"We just didn't deserve it," said Strief, who is beginning his 10th season with the Saints. "We're at the end of the season and we're technically still in the hunt and it's like: We don't deserve to be in the hunt. It just so happens that we are."
As this season begins, there's not much evidence to suggest the NFC South will be much better in 2015.
Carolina, whose postseason ended in the division round to Seattle, was the favorite to repeat as division champions -- at least before star wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin tore his anterior cruciate ligament during training camp. Atlanta's offense is intriguing, but first-year Falcons Coach Dan Quinn -- who coordinated a defense that led Seattle to consecutive Super Bowls -- inherited the league's worst such unit in 2014.
Tampa Bay, which lost 14 games last season, has started over after drafting quarterback Jameis Winston with the No. 1 overall pick. And New Orleans is perhaps the division's biggest question.
"Just understand that you never know how many more opportunities there are going to be," said New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees, who at age 36 is still one of the NFL's best passers. "Why not us? Why not this year?"
That's how Strief thinks, too, saying as the Saints agonized through a disappointing season, they absorbed a few lessons, too.
"We learned a lot about ourselves and things that we could and couldn't do," he said. "Last year allowed us to refocus on: Okay, why is this happening?"
The Saints ignored details, Strief said, on the field and, perhaps more important, in their locker room. He said last year's team lacked chemistry, and Strief has been around long enough to understand the little things that pull a team together during its best and worst days.
He was on the 2006 team, which returned to New Orleans a year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city and the Superdome, leading to speculation that the Saints could leave the city permanently. Strief was there in 2010 when the Saints won the Super Bowl, and he was there when his team was involved in the bounty system scandal.
After the hurricane, which occurred a decade ago this week, and Bountygate, the locker room eventually felt stronger for having gone through the turmoil. Strief wondered if that might be possible once again, after something as simple as a disappointing season in which the division remained within reach.
"For a long time we had guys that had been here long enough that most of the guys knew what was expected," he said. "So you go back and say we missed an opportunity early to re-teach that, to show guys who hadn't been here, what the expectation really was."
The expectations this year, Strief said, will be different. Winning the division is once again a reachable goal, and perhaps the Saints will be on the field when the playoffs begin rather than watching -- or, in Strief's case, not watching.
"The whole season was a missed opportunity," he said of last season. "The fact that everybody else was bad with us kind of makes that look different, but at the end of the day we just weren't good enough."
Sports on 08/29/2015