If you missed tonight’s game, consider it a blessing. Tonight’s highly anticipated match-up of high flying offenses, led by future hall of fame quarterbacks, was a lopsided blowout. Unfortunately, the hometown Saints were on the wrong side. The Denver Broncos took down our New Orleans Saints 34-14 in a game in which Peyton Manning shined and Drew Brees\u00a0struggled. The Saints dropped to 2-5 overall (1-1 NFC South), while the Broncos improved to 4-3 overall (2-0 AFC West).<\/p>\n
Tonight’s loss might be the ugliest for New Orleans during the Drew\u00a0Brees\u00a0era. After fighting hard to win their last two games and keep from crippling their playoff hopes early in the season, the Saints came out unprepared and played one of the flattest, heartless games in recent memory. From top to bottom, just about every player seemed to go through the motions and give nothing near 100% effort. Even the commonly sharp Drew Brees\u00a0seemed to have his mind on anything, but football. From the opening whistle, he never seemed to have that usual look of focus in his eye. It was just one of those nights.<\/p>\n
Things started with\u00a0two and outs by each team to begin the game. The Saints punted for their second straight possession to open, pinning the Broncos at their own 2 yard line. Manning took them 98 yards in 4:39, finishing things off with\u00a0a 1 yard touchdown by Willis McGahee.<\/p>\n
Late in the 1st quarter, the Saints capitalized on a Broncos fumble to set up good field position.\u00a0Brees\u00a0took them 55 yards in four plays to tie the game on a 29 yard touchdown pass to Darren\u00a0Sproles. The touchdown pass from\u00a0Brees\u00a0extended his streak to 50 games and was also his 300th\u00a0TD pass of his career. The 7-7 tie was the closest the Saints would get for the rest of the night.<\/p>\n
Denver would score unanswered on five more drives throughout the game, starting with\u00a0a 13 yard Eric Decker touchdown reception, followed by a 33 yard field goal as time expired in the 1st half. The only score of the 3rd quarter came courtesy of a 1 yard touchdown pitch and catch from Manning to\u00a0Demaryius\u00a0Thomas.<\/p>\n
In the 4th quarter, Manning hit Decker for their second touchdown of the night, coming form 2 yards out. Matt Prater would then close out the scoring for Denver with another 33 yard field goal by Matt Prater.<\/p>\n
Down 34-7, Drew\u00a0Brees\u00a0led the Saints down field for their only other score of the night to help make the game look a smidgen more respectable.\u00a0Brees\u00a0hooked up with\u00a0Jimmy Graham for an 18 yard touchdown with\u00a02:03 to go. As if New Orleans had any chance left at that time, their onside kick attempt came up short and that just about wrapped it up.<\/p>\n
New Orleans Passing:\u00a0Drew\u00a0Brees\u00a0finished 22\/42 for 213 yards with\u00a02\u00a0TDs\u00a0and 1 INT.<\/p>\n
New Orleans Rushing: Pierre Thomas had 8 carries for 43 yards, Mark Ingram had 3 carries for 7 yards, and Darren\u00a0Sproles\u00a0had 4 carries for -1 yard.<\/p>\n
New Orleans Receiving:\u00a0Sproles\u00a0had 7 catches for 56 yards and 1 TD, Jimmy Graham had 5 catches for 63 yards and 1 TD, and Marques\u00a0Colston\u00a0had 5 catches for 63 yards.<\/p>\n
Denver Passing: Peyton Manning finished 22\/30 305 yards with\u00a03\u00a0TDs\u00a0and 0\u00a0INTs.<\/p>\n
Denver Rushing: Willis\u00a0McGahee\u00a0had 23 carries for 122 yards and 1 TD and Ronnie Hillman\u00a0had 14 carries for 86 yards.<\/p>\n
Denver Receiving:\u00a0Demaryius\u00a0Thomas had 7 catches for 137 yards and 1 TD, Eric Decker had 4 catches for 43 yards and 2\u00a0TDs, and\u00a0McGahee\u00a0added 2 catches for 33 yards.<\/p>\n
The loss for the Saints puts them on the brink of realistic playoff contention. The way things are shaping up, 9-7 might not cut it this year. 10-6 seems like it could be the benchmark to grab a\u00a0wildcard\u00a0spot, which means the Saints would need to go 8-1 to finish the year. Not as if that task could ever be anything but very challenging, New Orleans still has numerous challenging games against the undefeated Falcons (twice), home against San Francisco, @ New York Giants, and @ Dallas Cowboys.<\/p>\n
The fat lady hasn’t started singing quite yet, but she is certainly warming up the vocals. Until the Saints are mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, we’ll keep the faith\u00a0here at Saints 247, as should you. Keep the faith\u00a0Who\u00a0Dats, anything is possible.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you missed tonight’s game, consider it a blessing. Tonight’s highly anticipated match-up of high flying offenses, led by future hall of fame quarterbacks, was a lopsided blowout. Unfortunately, the hometown Saints were on the wrong side. The Denver Broncos took down our New Orleans Saints 34-14 in a game in which Peyton Manning shined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pelicansreport.com\/saints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}