The 2010 NFL season begins tonight with a game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints. Can the injury-ravaged Vikings go on the road and steal a win from the defending Super Bowl champions? Yes, says NFL Hall-of-Famer turned Pro Football Weekly talking-head Dan Hampton. Per Hampton, all that Minnesota needs to do is "go down there and hit that town like Katrina." Not surprisingly, some people took issue with that particular analogy:

• What on Earth? Pro Football Talk's Michael David Smith admits he is clueless as to why Hampton would trot out a Hurricane Katrina quip for a game featuring the Saints. "But," writes Smith, "I feel confident saying that Hampton will open next week's show with an apology. If he's on next week at all."

• Too Soon At the Huffington Post, Shaneika Dabney wonders what the joke was supposed to be. "Let me spell it out plainly," she says. "Hurricane Katrina is still an open wound. We're still not 'over it.'"

• Revealing Hampton would have been better served by sticking to the "usual cliches" of in-studio analysts, observes the editorial board of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Of all the post-Katrina jabs taken at the city, Hampton's comments "could win a prize for cluelessness."

• The Takeaway The remarks showed the variety of ways Americans are marking the five-year anniversary of the storm, writes Sports Grid's Glenn Davis. For some, the past few weeks represented a chance to "take a look back at the disaster, examine New Orleans’ progress, ponder once again what might have made the original event less of a nightmare, and take time to remember all that was lost. For Dan Hampton, it was a chance to make "ill-conceived football analogies."

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Ray Gustini