We’ll go ahead and take a look back at the good and the bad from last weekend. One of the lists will be very short, while the other could go on for days. Unfortunately, the longer list is the bad one. We may have to dig deep to find some good from Sunday night’s game, but we’ll do our best.
Saints
Pierre Thomas
Pierre was the most effective runner for the Saints, taking 8 carries for 43 yards. That’s good for a 5.4 yards per carry average, which is a number the Saints need to get closer to as a whole in the running game. Pierre was his typical self, bouncing off of tacklers and getting extra yardage on second and third efforts. Unfortunately, since the Saints were losing by multiple scores for most of the night, they could not attempt to run the ball more than they did. If New Orleans makes a better attempt to get Thomas running the ball like that in the rest of their games, they’ll have a much better shot at pulling out victories.
Darren Sproles
Sproles was very effective out of the backfield as a pass catcher and certainly not as a runner. He only had 4 carries which totaled -1 yard, but he had 7 catches for 56 yards and a touchdown. Early in the second quarter, Sproles took a pass out of the backfield, cutting in and out while making multiple defenders miss for a 29 yard touchdown to tie the game. The catch and run was much like we saw from him almost every game last year, when the Saints got the ball in to his hands as much as possible.
Thomas Morstead
Yeah, things were that bad. They were so bad that in a 20 point loss, the third best player for the Saints was their punter. He isn’t necessarily just on here by default, though. Morstead punted 8 times, averaging 51.6 yards per punt. He pinned Denver deep in their territory a few times, but unfortunately the defense couldn’t do their part to take advantage.
Sinners
Drew Brees
It’s not very often you’ll see Drew end up on this list. Even in the majority of the losses during the Brees era, Drew performed adequate at the least, sometimes putting up very good numbers. That wasn’t the case on Sunday night, though. Drew was 22/42 for 213 yards with 2 TDs and 1 INT. That’s a 52% completion percentage, which is something you’ll rarely see from #9. The interception came on a 4th down attempt in which he had a man open in the middle of the field, but seemed to short arm the throw which ended up causing the ball to come out flat, helping Wesley Woodyard make a fantastic leaping catch for the INT. It was an all around bad game for Drew, as his throws were completely off on almost all of his misses and even some of his completions.
Jimmy Graham
In Graham’s return, he looked anything but himself. Drops riddled his night, as he could not get comfortable in the flow of the game. His ankle looked fine, but he just looked out of sync. He had 5 catches for 63 yards and a garbage time touchdown, but his night could have been much better if he was able to reel in one or two of his drops.
Entire Saints Defense
Just about every player who took the field on the defensive side of the ball on Sunday could be singled out, but as a whole the performance was flat out pathetic. It’s sad to say, but it was just that bad. The tackling was possibly worse than a high school or even pee-wee football game and that’s really not much of an exaggeration. The defensive line was blown off of the ball all night, allowing the Broncos running backs to average a whopping 5.7 yards per carry. The secondary was caught out of place all night long and for the most part they weren’t even in the vicinity of Broncos receivers. As a whole, it was extremely disappointing to watch the defense’s performance. It was especially disappointing considering they seemed to be improving through the last two games New Orleans has played. Hopefully the poor performance was just a hiccup in the development of Spagnuolo’s scheme and things can get better, rather than worse.
