The Saints are a 3-1 team this season, but they just don’t feel like a team that is coming off of a Super Bowl victory. New Orleans has had all sorts of running back problems this year. We know that RB Pierre Thomas, RB Reggie Bush, RB PJ Hill, and RB Lynell Hamilton are all missing this game this week, which really leaves just RB Chris Ivory and RB Ladell Betts to tote the rock. That means, for yet another week, the pressure will be on QB Drew Brees. Brees, an MVP candidate, has put up respectable numbers, but just like the rest of his team, things just don’t totally feel right. The Purdue Boilermaker has completed a whopping 73.8 percent of his passes for 1,131 yards and seven TDs against two picks. WR Lance Moore had a great game last week, and he now has 209 receiving yards to lead the team in spite of the fact that he has not started a game. New Orleans survived last week against the Carolina Panthers, but it hasn’t scored more than 25 points in a game this year, a far cry from what this team was able to do last season at full strength.
The QB Derek Anderson era appears to be over in the desert. Now, the Cardinals are really scrambling to try to find a quarterback after sending QB Matt Leinart out of town. Anderson only completed 51.8 percent of his passes for 644 yards with three scores and five picks in four games. There are only two rookies left on this roster, QB Max Hall and QB John Skelton. Hall will be getting the nod on Sunday after throwing for 85 yards in relief this year. Don’t be shocked to see extra work for RB Tim Hightower and RB Beanie Wells. The two have combined for 323 yards and two TDs this year, though Wells has only played in two games this year after starting the year on the self. WR Larry Fitzgerald has to be frustrated with the way that things have gone this year. He has only caught 19 passes for 208 yards and two TDs. This offense only has five TDs to speak of this year on offense, and this schedule hasn’t been all this difficult, save last week’s loss to the San Diego Chargers.
The Cardinals might be going with a first time starting quarterback, but they just aren’t going to lay down and die, especially after getting whacked by the Saints last year in the playoffs. Arizona is good enough to win this game outright, and we think that giving it a full touchdown is a disgrace. New Orleans is a one dimensional team right now, and 1-D teams don’t win a heck of a lot in the NFL.
Chastened Dime renews home lending. (Dime savings Bank of New York)
American Banker January 21, 1992 | Roosevelt, Phil A humbled Dime Savings Bank of New York is taking another stab at home mortgages.
The East Coast’s largest thrift binged on home loans in the late 1980s — and wound up with extraordinarily high delinquencies. In the aftermath, it all but disappeared from the market.
Ready to Do Business Two years later, Dime has a new mortgage staff, a new strategy, and a new hunger to lend. website dime savings bank
Its goal, according to chairman and chief executive Richard Parsons: write $1.5 billion of mortgages this year, up from a scant $250 million in 1991. Then, hit $3 billion by 1994.
“We’re looking to ’92 to get things ramped up again,” Mr. Parsons said.
But others wonder whether Dime, which has $10.3 billion of assets, can escape from its problematic past.
Three years of heavy losses have eroded the thrift’s once-enviable capital base. Dime executives claim that problem assets have just about peaked, but the bad loans are at staggering levels.
Nonperforming assets — primarily overdue mortgages and foreclosed homes — made up 10.8% of the thrift’s assets at the end of September, up from 1.65% in 1987.
The prospect of regulators forcing a merger with a stronger institution still looms over the 133-year-old Dime, according to some analysts.
“You can do an analysis and conclude the thing will survive, and you can do an analysis and conclude it won’t survive,” said Jonathan Gray, who follows thriffs at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “It’s not going to be clear cut either way but will be at the discretion of the regulators.” Mr. Parsons, who became president of Dime in 1988 and chief executive in 1990, gamely predicts that Dime will not only survive but emerge as a firmly profitable “super community bank.” Battling the Competition He says the company will be right up there in its home market, battling Citibank, Chemical Bank, and other New York giants for the consumer’s loyalty.
If he succeeds in turning the thrift around, Mr. Parsons’ own career could take some interesting twists. The executive, some observers speculate, would be well-positioned to run for political office as a liberal Republican.
As the first black person to head a bank or thrift of Dime’s size, he is already in the limelight. He is a lawyer and was an aide to Nelson A. Rockefeller and Gerald R. Ford. here dime savings bank
Mr. Parsons doesn’t rule out a future in politics, but says that for now he is focused solely on the bank.
“Right now for me, job No. 1, 2, and 3 is getting Dime turned around and in a position to compete in the market place,” he said.
The thrift’s troubles began when it threw all its weight into “low doc” mortgages about five years ago, dispensing with the crucial work of checking into borrowers’ income claims.
The strategy, combined with agressive expansion outside its home market, boosted Dime’s mortgage originations to a peak of $4.5 billion in 1987, from $2.7 billion in 1986.
But when the economy in the Northeast soured, Dime was knee-deep in bad loans. The only other big lender to report mortgage problems of a similar size was Citicorp, which went head-to-head with Dime in the mortgage derby of the 1980s.
Not surprisingly, Dime’s new lending strategy puts safety first. The thrift plans to write all its mortgages to the exacting specifications of secondary market investors – even the loans that it keeps for its portfolio.
In fact, many of the loans it keeps will be converted into AA-rated securities.
“We can’t make any more mistakes on the credit side,” Mr. Parsons said. “Cats have nine lives; I don’t know how many lives banks have.
In late 1990, Mr. Parsons hired David Bushley, a mortgage banking veteran, to head Dime’s effort. Mr. Bushley had done stints at Cleveland’s National City Corp. and the now-defunct mortgage unit of Merrill Lynch & Co.
Dime has also brought in executives to supervise new mortgage lending, secondary market sales, and loan servicing. Moreover, about two-thirds of its 65 loan officers were hired within the past two years.
In another shift, the thrift plans to buy a sizable portion of its new loans from other companies.
This strategy, known as wholesale mortgage banking, is intended to achieve geographic loan diversification without the expense of opening more branches.
The strategy carries the risk that Dime will be far removed from knowing its borrower, but its executives say they are taking pains to avoid such problems.
For example, they say Dime will deal only with a handful of other lenders – and even then, only with large, well-established companies.
For all the virtues of the future plan, Dime still has a monumental overhang from its past, analysts warn.
Furthermore, it must still satisfy regulators that it has the strength to survive in the 1990s.
Dime, which dipped below one of its three capital requirements last year, is still awaiting a judgment from the Office of Thrift Supervision on its plan for capital improvement. It submitted the plan last August.
“I don’t think they’re in danger of being seized,” said Peter Treadway, an analyst at Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co. “But they are greatly handicapped as a competitor. They have a lot of work to do with problem assets, and that’s going to distract them as competitors move forward.” Roosevelt, Phil
Playoff foes from last year renew ties in NFL betting action in the regular season in 2010, as the New Orleans Saints take on the Arizona Cardinals in the desert.
