It’s been tough sledding for Drew Brees and the Saints when playing in Chicago.
We’re through the first quarter of the season and things couldn’t be going any better. The offense has already hit full speed and the defense has been surprisingly dominant. The two have combined for a 4-0 start with their last two wins coming via home blowouts. The Saints have played three of their first four in the Superdome, as they now head on the road to Chicago to face the Bears. Sean Payton and Drew Brees are 0-3 at Soldier Field, which includes their 39-14 loss in the 2006 NFC Championship game. The silver lining in that 0-3 record, is that all three of those games were played in December/January with below freezing temperatures. Thankfully, the schedule makers did the Saints a favor and gave them their trip to Chicago in early October. These teams last met two seasons ago in the Saints home opener in 2011. New Orleans won easily by the score of 30-13 in a game that they sacked Jay Cutler 6 times. The Saints would love to repeat that performance and with the way the pass rush has played so far this year, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
New Orleans heads to Chicago on a short week, coming off of a 38-17 victory over Miami on Monday night. The Lions’ offense is very comparable to the Saints’, so it’s very possible that New Orleans can give them the same types of problems. As mentioned, the Saints come in to this game unbeaten with a perfect 4-0 record. They are tied for 2nd in the NFC with the Bears with a +5 in turnover differential. Also, Drew Brees is coming off of his first game without an interception since Week 16 of last season. The offense comes in to Week 5 ranked 4th in the NFL with 419.5 yards per game. One of my favorite stats thus far in the season is that the Saints are 2nd in the NFL in yards difference, which is a huge credit to both sides of the ball.
The Bears suffered their first loss of the season at the hands of the Detroit Lions in a game that they surrendered 40 points. They come in to Week 5 allowing 384 yards per game, which is 21st in the NFL. They’ve certainly taken a small step back from year’s past, which could largely be a result of the release of Brian Urlacher, who is now retired. Chicago’s defense is still producing takeaways, which are always a large benefactor in their wins. They have forced 14 turnovers, covering up for 9 giveaways from their offense. They’re still a tough unit, but much more beatable than the last three times these teams met in Chicago.
Pass Offense
Fresh off of another 400 yard game for the career of Drew Brees, he has his passing offense ranked 2nd in the NFL with an average of 338.3 yards per game. The majority of his completions are going to his tight end and running backs. Jimmy Graham is tied for 1st in the NFL with 6 touchdowns, 2nd in receiving yards with 458, and tied for 8th in receptions with 27. Darren Sproles is coming off of his best game of the season and is tied for 1st in the NFL for running back receptions with 23. Marques Colston is the only wide receiver on the team that has more than 8 catches for the season. The pass offense showed just how dynamic it was against Miami with those three pass catchers. As Miami double covered Graham, then Sproles, Colston became the beneficiary and beat single coverage repeatedly in the second half. Lance Moore missed Monday’s game after sustaining a wrist injury in the win over Arizona. Moore will miss his second game when the Saints suit up on Sunday.
Chicago’s pass defense comes in ranked 23rd in the NFL, allowing 277.8 yards per game. In their loss last week, they surprisingly held Matthew Stafford to only 242 yards passing. Seeing as the Lions scored 40 points, you’d think he would’ve broken 300. Charles Tillman leads the Bears secondary, as usual, as he’s tied with Major Wright with 2 interceptions. Chicago has 6 as a unit. They have not gotten to the quarterback a whole lot, though. They have only 6 sacks on the year, which is 3rd worst in the NFL. D.J. Williams, Brian Urlacher’s replacement at middle linebacker, has two of those.
Though Chicago hasn’t made much happen in the backfield so far this year, Drew Brees will have to be weary of star right defensive-end Julius Peppers. Saints fans should remember Peppers very well from his days in Carolina. The pass protection has looked much better since halftime of the Arizona game, but Sunday will be a big test. A big match-up to watch will be Jimmy Graham and D.J. Williams. Williams is a very good linebacker and is typically good in coverage on tight ends. No one is naive enough to believe that Graham is anything near a normal tight end, but Williams could provide the best linebacker coverage that the Saints have seen so far.
Rush Offense
Same ole story for the Saints rushing attack coming in to this weekend. They had absolutely no success against the Dolphins on Monday night. After a 68 yard rushing performance as a team, they come in to Week 5 ranked 25th in the NFL with 81.3 yards per game. It’s hard to believe that they’ve even mustered up that, considering it took them four games to get anyone over 100 yards rushing for the entire season. Pierre Thomas leads the team with 101 yards, averaging 25.3 yards per game. Darren Sproles notched the Saints’ first and only rushing touchdown of the season on Monday and has a 4.2 yards per carry average. Khiry Robinson came back down to earth after bursting on to the scene in mop up duty against the Cardinals two weeks ago. He led the Saints in rushing with 37 yards last week and received triple the amount of carries as anyone else on the team.
Chicago sits about right in the middle of the league in rushing defense at 15th, allowing 106.3 yards per game. They’re coming off of a game where they allowed our old friend Reggie Bush to run all over them. Bush put up an 18 carry, 139 yard performance that included a vintage 37 yard touchdown run. He boasted an outstanding 7.7 yards per carry average. The main run defender for the Bears is weak-side linebacker Lance Briggs. He leads the team with 26 tackles. Major Wright also provides great run support and is second on the team in tackles with 20 from the strong safety position. Wright is very similar to Roman Harper, for those who’d like a comparison.
My typical analysis, given all of the factors of this game, would be that the Saints will try and get the run going early. Playing on the road against a fairly good defense, they’ll try to keep the Bears off balance and keep them from sitting back and trying to shut down Drew Brees. I like to think of myself as rational person, though, and believing that Sean Payton will come out and look to run the ball with the way things have gone on the ground so far isn’t very rational. I mean, seriously, the man had so little faith in the offense’s ability to chew clock on the ground against Miami that he was throwing the ball with 5 minutes left and up 21 last week. He’s much smarter than all of us when it comes to his team, though, so only he knows whether it’s truly best that the offense comes out slinging the ball through the air. I’m not saying that there’s no shot the Saints try and run the ball a lot early, but I’d be very surprised if they do.
Players to Watch
Drew Brees
Brees finds himself here based largely off of what we just got done talking about. The Saints can’t run the ball. Plain and simple. Brees will need to carry the offense through the air and try to put up some early points against Chicago to put them on their heels early. Jay Cutler is not the guy you want when playing from behind with the defense sitting back, knowing what’s coming, so an early lead would be huge. Oh, and the other reason he’s on this list? He’s pretty darn good.
Kenny Stills
After a stellar preseason, Stills has been pretty quiet to open the year. He had a big reception to get the Saints inside the 10 yard line against Atlanta and Drew has looked for him deep on a few other occasions. Still, he only has 7 catches so far. With Lance Moore missing his second straight game and the defense giving Sproles some extra attention, Stills is the guy to fill the Moore void. He’s almost the exact same type of player and has shown the ability to get deep on defenses. Even if he doesn’t come up with the reception, he has drawn a few pass interference calls, which are just as good.
Jimmy Graham
No surprise here. The man is an absolute beast and he gets even better with every single catch he makes. PAY THE MAN! Sorry, I couldn’t resist. In all seriousness, he’ll be a huge factor every single time the Saints play, but I’m especially watching him for the D.J. Williams coverage that I mentioned earlier. I don’t have any doubts that he can beat Williams’ coverage, considering he’s already made Patrick Peterson’s coverage look as good as a high school back up, but it’ll still be fun to watch.
Prediction
Anytime the Saints go to Chicago, I’m a bit worried. Maybe it’s just bad nightmares of 2006, but the team has struggled there. Thankfully, I don’t believe it’ll be as much of a struggle on Sunday. Between the warmer weather, facing Jay Cutler, and the fact that Sean Payton and Drew Brees have openly acknowledged the fact that they’d very much like to erase the 0-3 record in the Windy City, I have confidence that they’ll do so.
Saints – 27
Bears – 20
Who Dat?!
