Drew Brees has been there, right?
This feels almost like a love story, after all, and the fans are roaring in another Bourbon Street celebration, refreshing our memories of the moment the New Orleans Saints celebrated a history-making win at the Super Bowl a few years ago.
That was the night it felt like Mardi Gras, as the vast majority never jumped onto the bandwagon but Mardi Gras floats to soak in the jollity with a hollowed franchise. It doesn’t seem like a fascinating tale in football, but the streets are normally awash in black and gold every time the Saints bring a sense of euphoria to a proud city once devastated by the tragedy of a tropical storm.
Saturday evening, Brees couldn’t be stopped and engineered the best offense in the league. The home stadium, now the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, was electrifying and the crowd was partying as New Orleans’ offense dazzled. And that’s why the Saints are favorites to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. Brees is having an outstanding season and deserves plaudits for surpassing Dan Marino’s single-season record for passing yards.
If he continues to dominate, as he has been doing in the past months, this playoff will be the paradigm of football at its greatest in a season that he has proven to be a worthy candidate for the Most Valuable Player award. It’s the rest of the country whose faith, given that Brees is perfectly accurate and well-suited for Sean Payton’s schemes, lies so easily with the Saints.
Fair enough. He’s now, as a beloved NFL star in the Mardi Gras-jiving, Cajun-eating, cool-jazzing, voodoo-practicing culture, the god of the city after Katrina wiped out New Orleans and destroyed foundations to leave many homeless and without refuge. Rather, a humanitarian – not only a football star, he’s healed the pain of helpless citizens by his charitable work in the inner community and by leading the Saints to the sweetest win in franchise history.
He turned in his best performance, finally praised – and best of all – maybe the more dangerous quarterback behind Aaron Rodgers at Green Bay. Thanks in part to Brees, shredding the Lions for 466 yards through the air, the Saints won 45-28 over Detroit in the NFC wild-card game and will advance to play at San Francisco next Saturday. On the night the Saints set a playoff-record 626 total yards, the Lions had no answer and couldn’t stop them from marching in.
The real significance here is that the Lions weren’t roaring on defense and broke down mentally and physically, leaving Saints’ receivers wide open and enabling Brees to heave the ball into the air for a wonderful aerial display. It’s definitely clear the Saints are loaded with star power, and frankly, they have the highest-flying offense in the league.
This is where Marques Colston first ripened into a star wide receiver, a primary target for Brees all the time. Early on, he shook off a fumble that put a halt to the Saints’ opening drive, but managed to finish with seven catches for 120 yards against the Lions’ lousy secondary.
Despite the turnover, he caught the ball on third-and-11 from the Saints’ 7 in the third quarter — while holding a 17-14 lead — a purposeful play that eventually set up a 3-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jimmy Graham.
With that in mind, this is where Graham has gradually grown as an accessory in such a balanced and surging offense, a leading tight end in the NFL. As now a Saints standout, he was adopted from a foster care as a child by his adoptive mother, Beck Vinson. He is, nevertheless, extremely athletic and earned a basketball scholarship to attend the University of Miami, where he played basketball for three years and decided to join the football team in his last year.
This is where wide receiver Robert Meachem became an integral element within the Saints immeasurable offense, compiling four catches for 111 yards and one touchdown. It was the kind of night that records were meant to be broken, since Brees broke his own passing yard record of 404 set last season against Seattle and his passer rating of 134.4 shattered the 125.4 he set against Arizona in 2009.
The Saints, believe it or not, are the best offense in football on third down and convert on third downs all the time, such as Saturday night when they never punted the ball and not once did you see punter Thomas Morstead.
Three times in the game Payton boldly opted to gamble on fourth down, and he wasn’t unsuccessful like Belichick’s 4th-and-Blunder a few years ago. It’s befitting to determine that the Saints’ offense is actually built on deepness and finesse.
Every time the Saints had possession of the ball, on every series and drive with a blend of talent and acumen, they went down the field in a long scoring drive that exhausted the Lions’ tacklers. And yes, the Saints easily won this game. This was not a contest, not a well-anticipated one anyway.
There is no denying that Brees, marveled at how he has mastered a milestone and carried the weight on his shoulders, has exceptional talent and produced efficiently this season.
The shred of logic in the fact that the Lions couldn’t hold the most potent offense in the NFL unfolded when the Saints were successful on third-down and fourth-down conversions. The missed tackles were painful, just as much as Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford had to painfully watch from the sideline as the Saints had possession of the ball for much of the game.
As always, in the playoffs each season, the locals talk heavy about the Saints and pour onto the streets for a festive party if New Orleans prevails. Brees remains a treasure, although he’s literally not mentioned in the same breath with Rodgers or New England quarterback Tom Brady. It’s been established that Brees won’t become the league’s best quarterback until he win the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XLVI.
But the avalanche of accomplishments the Saints have had this season is beyond unbelievable.
