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Super Saints Weekly 260

Super Saints Weekly 260

Underdog Title Working Again
The Saints won their third straight this week with a victory against the slumping San Francisco 49ers. After starting the season 0-4, the Saints were written off by most people and their season was expected to be one that was supposed to be full of promise, but instead turned out to be a disappointment. The team went from being the favorite of many people on their weekly picks to being the underdog. With that being said, the Saints quickly embraced their underdog role yet again and began to pull off a string of victories with that title being tagged on them.
While this isn’t unusual for the Saints, since some of their most successful seasons occurred when they were expected to be the doormat of their division, it is a bit of a surprise this season. Coming into this season, the Saints offense was returning most of the players that were on the roster last season. Considering their success last year, many people believed they would come into the year with the same high powered offense. However, after losing a couple of games, followed by losing Deuce for the season with an injury, many people jumped off the Saints bandwagon and declared them dead for the season. Now as the underdog the Saints appear to have embraced the “us against the world” mentality and are playing like the team they were last season. The defense is getting pressure to the quarterback, and the offense is putting up points. Looking at this, one has to think that maybe the Saints just needed that underdog role to help give them the extra push to help put them back on track.
Hopefully the Saints will continue to use this underdog tag during the course of the season to help inspire them to continue to win week after week as they did last season. While some teams appear to buckle under the pressure and with the sort of adversity that the Saints had early in the year, the Saints appear to thrive on it. If all goes well, the Saints will be able to keep that chip on their shoulder and prove that sometimes the underdog is the one dog that bites the hardest.

Player of the Game
This week’s player of the game for the Saints is quarterback Drew Brees. Brees started the season really rocky, but over the past few weeks he seemed to start coming around and the game against the 49ers was his coming out party. Brees was 31 of 39 for 336 yards and 4 touchdowns in the victory against the 49ers. Overall he looked sharp and his passes were on the mark. Brees could have had a few more completions if not for a couple of drops by receivers, but overall he performed better this game than he had so far this season. Hopefully this is the first of many strong performances by Brees to help take some pressure off the running game and force teams to be honest instead of focusing on the rush or pass.

Q & A
Q & A is the question and answer section. If you have a question you would like answered, email it to SuperSaintsWeekly@yahoo.com with the subject heading of Q&A and we will try to answer the question to the best of our ability.

Saints vs. Jaguars Game Preview
This coming Sunday the Saints will be facing off against the Jaguars. Overall this is a much better match up for the Saints then it would have been a few weeks ago. The Jaguars have a few players banged up by injuries and will be going into this game looking to focus their offensive attack on the running game. Defensively the Saints will need to focus on shutting down the rush and force the Jaguars to try and win the game through the air. By doing this, they should be able to put some pressure on the rookie quarterback for the Jaguars and possibly force some turnovers. Offensively the Saints will need to continue to do what they have the last couple of weeks by balancing the rushing and passing attack. If they are able to do this, it will keep the Jaguars defense off balance and help the Saints to pull off a 4th victory.

Psycho’s View
Overall I am impressed with the Saints this week. Throughout the Saints history they have historically struggled against teams that they are supposed to beat. Coming out against a team you should beat and doing so to the extent that the Saints beat the 49ers is an encouraging sign. Another encouraging sign is the fact that Colston and Henderson finally appear to be coming around and making themselves part of the offense. I believe a key in this is the leadership by example that receiver David Patten who has really stepped up his game over the past few weeks and proven to be a reliable target for Brees. It finally seems that the Saints are starting to gel and if the Saints can pull out a victory against the Jaguars, then they will be right back in the division chase, with eyes from around the league focusing on them once again.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.