New Orleans Saints vs Jacksonville Jaguars
10/19/2023
Ceasars Superdome
I missed our annual dudes trip last year, so when we selected New Orleans I was really excited to hang out again with my long time friends. When we chose the location and the weekend, the football schedule was not available and in all honesty since most games are on Sunday I didn’t think I would be able to see a game. But luckily the bucket list gods were on my side and it just happened to by Thursday night football. So day of I was out of the house at 5am for my first flight to Vegas where I met up with my buddy Andy. There we flew into NOLA and landed around 3pm. We grabbed a taxi, dropped our stuff off at the hotel, and immediately met up with the other guys at Bar Tonique on Rampart. After a few heavy drinks everyone was feeling good and were ready to go to the game.
Walking over to the Superdome was crazy. Our hotel was only about a mile away and the town was rocking. The street was completely packed, everyone had drinks in hand, people were screaming, and music was blasting. After getting through security our next goal was to figure out where our seats were located. When I first told the guys I wanted to hit up the game I said there was no expectation anyone else had to go. You never know if someone wants to spend money on watching two teams you have no affiliation with, but surprisingly all but one wanted to join in the fun. But that said, I wanted to make sure no one felt obligated to buy an expensive ticket so we got nosebleeds. When we entered the stadium we quickly realized we were on the complete other side and at least 6 stories up. It took about 10 minutes but finally we were settled in for the action. As I said, no one had skin in the game but a bunch of us are also in a fantasy league where you can bet on the line. So to make us cheer for the home team, all put money on the Saints. That was a bad move…
All night NOLA was very lackluster. There was little energy in the stadium and they simply couldn’t get their run or passing games going. While the Jags QB Trevor Lawrence (always reminds me of Sunshine on Remember the Titans) threw for 20 of 29, Travis Etienne ran for 2 TDs, and when Foyesade Oluokun returned an interception for a score I thought the game was completely out of reach. But the Saints fought back. They were down by 7 with just a few minutes left and were driving down the field. On a 3rd and goal, David Carr threw a perfect pass to Foster Moreau who was wide open in the back of the endzone, got two hands on the ball, but dropped the pass. On the final play of the game another pass to Chris Olave had no chance giving the ball back to Jacksonville with no chance for NO to stop them from running out the clock. Final score was 31 to 24. Oh well, the game was fun, and I didn’t have to fight for a ticket stub. Since most games are all electronic now, I was able to buy a ticket and am having it shipped to my house for $8. In all honesty, I would rather do this than look for and beg someone to give me theirs.
The rest of the weekend was a blast. After the game we got food at the NOLA cookery, Friday morning we did a fan boat tour, ate at Felix’s, crushed hurricanes at O’Brien’s, hit up the WW2 museum, and of course got some Café Dumond beignets. What a great trip.
