With their first round pick after missing last year due to Bountygate, the New Orleans Saints have taken Safety Kenny Vaccaro 15th in the 2013 Draft.
Immediately going defense the Sean Payton Era Pt. II isn’t going to mess around and why would you with Drew Brees still in fine form handling the snaps?
gq:
Ugliest loss of Week 5? Your memory of Drew Brees’s record.
So Drew Brees broke the hallowed Consecutive Games With a Touchdown Pass record, and NBC played it up to the best of their abilities. They cut to Johnny Unitas’s son Joe in the crowd, who had HUGE hands, like someone stuffed a catcher’s mitt under the skin of his palms. And they cut to Brees’s family in the luxury suite, and Sean Payton attending the game in a one-time conjugal visit. And they had Michele Tafoya remarking breathlessly on where the record-breaking ball was stashed. (SPOILER: They put it in a box!) They did everything possible to make it a memorable moment, and it wasn’t. No one really cares about that shit. A month from now, you won’t be able to remember who owns this record, and you won’t care, because caring about records is for other, douchier sports.
“It stings right now because of the expectation level that we had coming into this tournament and understanding that if we win here we’re into the NFC championship game and anything can happen. That’s tough. Tough to swallow at this point.”
- Drew Brees
(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Struggling to get through your Tuesday, while day dreaming of four great NFL games coming up this weekend??
Yeah, same here. How about letting Drew Brees & the Saints get you fired up?
Winners and Losers…Wild Card Weekend Edition
Each week throughout the playoffs, we’ll be recapping winners and losers from the week’s action. Let’s get right into it:
Winners
Houston Texans fans: Can’t help but feel happy for the fan base. They lost their football team in the 90s when they moved to Tennessee, welcomed an expansion team back to the city about a decade ago, then watched the team become one of the most notoriously underachieving squads in football. Their chance at a division title opened up this year thanks to a particular neck injury to another quarterback. And they seized upon it. Injuries along the way have derailed realistic chances at a Super Bowl. But their home win over the Bengals this weekend was a huge stepping stone for the franchise. The Houston Texans. Finally relevant.
Cincinnati Bengals: Yes, that was a disappointing playoff loss and debut for Andy Dalton and A.J. Green, and it leaves Marvin Lewis still winless in the post-season. But the future is bright for this team. With two first round picks in the upcoming draft, the Bengals might be competitive again in 2012. The Steelers and Ravens should get a handful from this team in the coming years.
Sean Payton: Everyone likes to say that the New Orleans head coach is fearless for his repeated decisions to go for it on fourth down. To me, he’s just maximizing the potential of his personnel. Taking risks is one thing, taking risks that makes sense is another. Ask Falcons head coach Mike Smith about that one. The Saints offense didn’t get going until the second half, their receivers were uncharacteristically shaky with a lot of drops, and they still set an NFL playoff record for total yards in a game. That’s got to be a disturbing thought for the rest of the playoff field.
Matt Flynn: Still the most sought after quarterback in free agency this off-season. No one displaced him this week. That makes him a winner.
Josh McDaniels: If you haven’t heard, McDaniels is back with the Patriots as an offensive assistant for the remainder of the playoffs, with the understanding that he will be their offensive coordinator next year when current coordinator Bill O’Brien takes the head coaching reigns at Penn State. McDaniels had a trying year in St. Louis, and now gets reunited with the Brady bunch. Funny that he will face the quarterback he drafted a few years ago in Denver, Tim Tebow, on Sunday. Not sure what it means, but that’s one more storyline to keep an eye on.
Tim Tebow: You know, ever since Tebow was put into the starting line-up, everything that he’s succeeded at has been taken with a grain of salt. There was an underlying assumption that he was doing things that didn’t make sense, that this couldn’t last, it felt more like satire than a real inspirational story. But that was a legitimate win over the top ranked defense in the league on Sunday. The Broncos didn’t win in spite of Tebow, they won because of him. You can talk about his throwing motion, you can break down the numbers, you can say it doesn’t make sense. But it might be time to consider the Tim Tebow story as legitimate.
Losers
Atlanta Falcons: On a day when they dropped a turd, it made sense that they’d end up with a deuce on the scoreboard. Still winless in the playoffs in the Matt Ryan era, and there has to be questions surrounding head coach Mike Smith.
Dick LeBeau: Another side-effect of Tebow. When he tears your defense up, you will be questioned and scruntinized because it’s never suppose to happen.
Phil Simms: Paraphrasing what I heard while he was commentating the Steelers-Broncos game: “For it to be a forward pass, it has to go forward.”
The referee doing the overtime coin toss in Denver: It seemed like he forgot his cheat sheet while explaining the new overtime rules. Thankfully, Tebow saved the officiating crew from any misinterpretation of the rules in overtime.
John Elway: Just because from now on, when they talk about “The Drive”, they will also mention “The Overtime Pass” by Tebow. The two of you are stuck together forever.
Fans: Just seven more football games left until the off-season.
Tom Brady marks his spot on the all-time single season record list. Here’s how the top 5 fill out:
1. Drew Brees: 5,476 yards in 2011
2. Tom Brady: 5,235 yards in 2011
3. Dan Marino: 5,084 yards in 1984
4. Drew Brees: 5,069 yards in 2008
5. Matthew Stafford: 5,038 yards in 2011
Congrats again to Drew Brees and, wow, welcome Matthew Stafford!
(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
Congratulations to Drew Brees for becoming the new single season record holder in the NFL!
Brees still has one game left to add to his record, with Tom Brady closing in on Dan Marino’s old record as well.
To add to it, Brees has thrown a touchdown in 41 straight football games, just 6 shy of Johnny Unitas.
(Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
Who are the toughest QBs to read? Brady. Peyton. Brees. Rivers. Palmer.
The easiest? Younger guys — and most of the QBs in Cleveland.
“Fo’ sheezy my neezy keep my arms so Breesy”
How did Drew Brees spend is Monday Night? Oh, just throwing for 363 yards, 4 touchdowns, no interceptions and adding another rushing TD on the G-Men. Breesy, indeed.
(Source: Yahoo!)
