The New Orleans Saints are for real. They’re better than Atlanta. They’re clearly better than Miami. It was easy to see through the first month of the season that they were going to be better than in 2012. But the ease with which the Saints dismantled the Dolphins last night made it crystal clear: The Saints are for real.

Drew Brees took the offense up and down the field at will. And the defense teed off on Ryan Tannehill, sacking him four times and not giving him any chance to get comfortable at all.

I think this game is more indicative of the strength of the Saints than an indictment of Miami. The Dolphins have plenty of issues to solve – particularly its need to better protect Tannehill. But Miami also is an improved team on the upswing. This was a good, dominant win for New Orleans on a national stage.

Real-life Major League movie playing out with Browns

ESPNCleveland.com writer Tony Grossi beat me to the reference on Twitter, but I was thinking the same thought he expressed on Sunday night: The Cleveland Browns may be living out a real-life version of the movie Major League. (Sept. 30, 5:12 a.m. –Twitter: @TonyGrossi)

#Browns seem to be writing the football remake of "Major League." Our comprehensive recap of 17-6 win over #Bengals. http://t.co/kwsSnSWAYT

— Tony Grossi (@TonyGrossi) September 29, 2013

The Browns ran their post-Trent Richardson trade record to 2-0. Cleveland knocked off the surging Bengals after upsetting the once-hapless Minnesota Vikings last week. You’ll recall that in the movie Major League, ownership was attempting to tear the team apart in order to induce fan indifference so it could move the franchise. I’m not suggesting that the Browns’ new ownership intends to relocate, but the Richardson trade did seem to be a knee jerk reaction to an 0-2 start.

The Browns have the best offensive skill talent they’ve assembled in years, even if it isn’t the new regime’s people. The group seems ready to give up on Brandon Weeden even though the second year QB had played the first two games sans Josh Gordon.

Rumors also persist that Gordon himself is on the block, even though he has produced 14 catches, 217 yards and a touchdown in his first two games of the season. He and Jordan Cameron present a solid combo in a receiving corps that has lived up to preseason billing thus far.

Trading Richardson before Gordon returned from suspension and turning the attention toward the 2014 draft was a bit premature. It’s clear the team isn’t on the same page as ownership in terms of Tanking for Teddy (Bridgewater). These Browns are not going to be an easy beat.

So I guess there’s just one thing left to do …

Same old, same old for Bengals, Texans, Cowboys

On the wrong end of that Browns win were the Cincinnati Bengals, who continue to be one of those maddeningly yo-yo-like teams that go back and forth between looking like a contender and looking like a middle-of-the-road pretender.

The Bengals dropped a growler, with Andy Dalton looking as bad as he has since arriving in southern Ohio. It’s the type of game a team trying to move into the league’s upper echelon cannot lose. They now head home to take on New England in a three-way tie for first at 2-2 rather than in control of their own destiny. This is one they’ll look back at with strong regret later as the year plays out.

Another team that failed to capitalize on the opportunity to grab an early stranglehold on their division was the Dallas Cowboys. They lost on the road to a mediocre, rebuilding San Diego club that has been surprisingly plucky in the early going.

While Philip Rivers seems to be getting his career back on track, this is a game Dallas had no business losing if they actually intend to enter the playoffs and then make some noise. Jason Garrett, Tony Romo and company continue the pattern apparent in recent years when they win a big one and then lose one they should have dominated.

Blame was plentiful. But it had some Cowboys observers wondering if this team isn’t going to end up looking the same as its predecessors of recent seasons. Thing is, 8-8 might be enough to win the once-proud NFC East this season, but even if it is, this version of the Cowboys isn’t going anywhere if Sunday’s debacle is an indicator.

Actually, it might be an epidemic across the state of Texas. The Houston Texans were again minutes from a big, potentially franchise-changing win when Matt Schaub threw a pick-six that allowed Seattle back in the game.

The Battle Red Blog called it a Texas-sized implosion. I’d just call it gross. After years of chasing Indianapolis when Peyton Manning was calling the signals for the Colts, the Texans had a couple years to put themselves in the driver’s seat. It’s close to becoming apparent that Gary Kubiak and Schaub aren’t the duo capable of keeping them there.

A chance for redemption comes at San Francisco Sunday night. The Colts already won there a couple weeks ago, but that’s not going to happen for Houston if they play like they did in the fourth quarter this week.

Steelers and Giants stuck at 0-4?

So it was easy to see the Steelers were aging and perhaps on a slide in the wrong direction, but 0-4?

The Steelers looked completely incapable of stopping Matt Cassel. Once that started happening, Adrian Peterson got on track. And while they made it close in the end, there really wasn’t any point at which Pittsburgh looked capable of stopping the less-than-vaunted Minnesota offense.

QB Ben Roethlisberger says Pittsburgh is the worst team in the league right now. This is a proud franchise, but it may be time to truly pull the plug and rebuild.

The complete falling apart of the New York Giants was less predictable. Ed Valentine, editor of the Big Blue View, notes that they are now 3-9 in the last 12 games with a number of blowouts among the losses.

In the NFC East anything could happen this year, but Valentine is suggesting that this would be a good time for New York to turn its attention to the future too.

“The reality is, though, the Giants are not a good football team,” he writes. “They have not been for awhile.”

No on playoff expansion

On another note, ESPN’s Kevin Seifert notes that the league may be close to shortening the preseason from four weeks to three, an idea it would be hard to argue against.

However, the caveat is that the owners plan to make up the lost revenue by adding another playoff team to each conference. Seifert says it is a trade off worth making. I say it’s a joke.

Even at six teams per conference, the league has been letting more and more 8-8 and 9-7 teams into the January dance. Even a 7-9 Seattle team snuck in a few years ago, winning what was then the putrid NFC West.

Some argue the Giants legitimized the inclusion of mediocre regular season teams by winning the 2011-12 Super Bowl following a 9-7 season. I disagree. To me, if you don’t win more than nine games during the regular season you shouldn’t be in the postseason mix. The ability to chase the Lombardi Trophy should be limited, to the degree possible, to teams that show some level of excellence during the regular season. The regular season must mean something.

We’ll have more on this later, but adding another wild card game will make the regular season less meaningful and will inevitably lead toward the inclusion of more mediocre to bad teams into the playoffs. Bad idea.