NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — If 2020 feels like it's aging us in dog years, what the heck are the New Orleans Saints doing to our well being? The Saints celebrated their birthday with an all day raging party which involved a lot of highs, a lot of lows, some very questionable decisions and ended with them somehow defeating the Chicago Bears 26-23 by the slimmest of margins.
The 2020 Saints are 5-2 and have won 4 straight by a combined 15 points.
I wouldn't exactly call the 2020 Saints a good team; they have Drew Brees operating the 2 minute drill at perfection levels and that's why they are 5-2.
Drew Brees has led the Saints to touchdowns in the final 2 minutes of the first half the last 5 games and the Saints have won 4 of those. He's 41 and Sunday looked as athletic and elusive in the pocket as he did a decade ago. I'm a broken record at this point but enjoy it. Drew Brees dragging this flawed Saints team as far as he can in his final season is really the perfect and fitting end to his Saints career.
Brees didn't have his top 3 receivers and completed passes to Austin Carr, Tommylee Lewis, and Juwan Johnson. 10 Saints caught passes and he did it against one of the elite defenses in the NFL. Let the rest of the world focus on all the stuff Drew doesn't do anymore -- 28 teams would LOVE to have 2020 Drew Brees.
“I’m so proud of our team. I’m so proud of those young guys that have had to step up.” Drew's modest but lets be real, any other quarterback throwing to that group of off brand receivers would've gotten eaten alive in Chicago. The offense Sunday was Drew being Drew and Alvin Kamara being Alvin.
At this point the only thing I can say about Alvin Kamara is those 5 minutes last year when he was struggling and I thought maybe the Saints shouldn't pay him is as bad an idea as when I considered investing in Quibi.
While Drew was continuing to make us wish he'd play forever, the defense did a little bit of everything Sunday.
They let a Bears offense coming off scoring 3 points jump ahead 13-3 and then score 10 points in the last 9 minutes to send the game to overtime. The Saints allowed Chicago to have its longest pass and running play of 2020 but also sacked Nick Foles 5 times and made just enough plays at just the right moments.
Chauncey Gardner Johnson also secured his place as the Saints player everyone in the entire world can't resist punching in the face. Somewhere on Sunday after Javon Sims punched Gardner Johnson, Michael Thomas understood what Javon was feeling. At least this time Gardner Johnson getting hit in the face benefited the Saints. Keep using those jerk super powers for good Chauncey!
The Saints defense actually did a couple of things well Sunday. They handled all those Bears bootleg plays really well and at the end of regulation they bent and bent but never broke. Don't pretend like I was the only one expecting some major mental error to cause Jimmy Graham to be wide open and score the winning touchdown. Holding on to the rope counts for something.
Has any person ever wanted to leave Chicago more than Sean Payton Sunday night? The man abandoned all logic and common sense and basically said, “Screw it, I'm cold, kick the damn field goal.”
For Payton to not run the clock down at the end of overtime to ensure either the Saints won or tied and make sure the Bears didn't get another chance if Wil Lutz missed the kick was clock management as bad as I've ever seen out of Payton. I've written like 3 to 4 columns over the years marveling at how brilliant he is at understanding the clock, but watching him suddenly turn into Andy Reid or Mike Smith operating the clock like a toddler trying to open a soda can was jarring.
At least after the game he admitted what we all knew, “I recognize we should have brought the clock down.”
Acknowledgment is the first step to improvement I guess.
Sean flirting with clock management disaster aside, his game plan down 3 receivers was low-key dazzling. He created and installed that game plan during a week where Hurricane Zeta delivered a direct hit to New Orleans. Pretty damn good.
Are the Saints a good team? In theory they have all the pieces to be one and at 5-2 their goal of winning a Super Bowl is still well within reach. I'm confident General Manager Mickey Loomis will try like mad to add a player or 2 at the trade deadline Tuesday so the Saints are far from a finished product.
Right now the 2020 Saints are living on the knife's edge and making our Sundays compelling. I use the word compelling because the really fun words we all screamed at our TV set yesterday aren't fit for mixed company.
Ralph Malbrough is a contributing writer and Saints fan living in Houston. Email him at saintshappyhour@gmail.com, find him on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter at @SaintsForecast or download the Saints Happy Hour Podcast.
