Dont be a meatball. The Saints are considered one of the most overall talented teams in football with one of the best backups in football that turned down being a starter to stay with the Saints.
The division doesnt look strong and Brees is back for second half of season. The season is far from over.
Bridgewater's trouble in replacing Brees
I never imagined a scenario in which the Saints could lose
Drew Brees for six weeks and still feel like things could have been worse. Given the Roethlisberger news, though, six weeks doesn't seem all that bad. The Saints are in much better shape to weather their quarterback's absence independent of its length, owing both to a better roster and a friendlier divisional situation. In
Teddy Bridgewater, their new quarterback also seemingly has a much higher floor than Pittsburgh has with Rudolph.
My qualifier there has more to do with the former Vikings starter than it does with Rudolph. I'm going to be honest: I would love it if Bridgewater succeeded. In addition to being beloved wherever he has gone during his pro career, Bridgewater spent years working his way back from the serious knee injury he suffered during the 2016 preseason. Much as Cowboys linebacker
Jaylon Smithwas able to parlay his comeback into a meaningful long-term deal, I hope Bridgewater does the same in New Orleans.
If the Saints knew they were getting the Bridgewater who made it to the Pro Bowl in his first full season as a starter with the Vikings, they could feel great about their chances of staying afloat without Brees. A healthy Bridgewater is a smart, accurate passer with excellent movement within the pocket. Great veteran quarterbacks have an ability to diagnose blitzes and nullify pressure before it even arrives; Bridgewater came out of Louisville doing just that at a high level. The 215-pound quarterback fell in the draft after
teams overreacted to a middling pro day performance, but he was clearly a better passer than
Blake Bortles, who went off the board 29 picks earlier.
At this point, though, we have to at least consider the possibility that the old Bridgewater isn't the guy the Saints will start for the next six weeks. Bridgewater has thrown 55 regular-season passes over three years since returning from his injury, and while his lone start came in Week 17 and without running back
Alvin Kamara or left tackle
Terron Armstead on the field, he hasn't played like a viable NFL quarterback. He has completed 56.4% of his passes while averaging just 5.1 yards per attempt. The only quarterbacks since 2016 who have failed to top the latter figure while throwing 50 passes or more are Matt Cassel,
Mark Sanchez and
Nathan Peterman.
Again, it's just one game, but Bridgewater's debut in meaningful action for the Saints
on Sundaywasn't impressive. The accuracy that was once his best trait disappeared at times. Many of his completions were gimmes from a Rams team that held a comfortable lead and didn't care about allowing short catches; 15 of Bridgewater's 17 completions came on passes thrown within seven yards of the line of scrimmage. By the end of the game, Bridgewater seemed to be locking onto receivers with limited success. The Rams even successfully had inside linebacker
Cory Littleton running with receiver
Michael Thomas on a pair of those targets, though he had help.
Naturally, the hope is that Bridgewater plays more like his old self as he gets regular reps. My suspicion is that he'll fall somewhere between the quarterback from 2015 and the guy who has been a replacement-level quarterback since returning. The Saints don't need to change their scheme with Bridgewater in the lineup, but I wonder if we see Sean Payton lean more heavily on his running game and try to keep Bridgewater out of third-and-long. New Orleans already played relatively slow in recent years with Brees as the quarterback, but it could now try to slow down games even further and trust its defense to hold up.
When I wrote about
the possibility of Brees declining in 2019, I suggested that the Saints could still win the Super Bowl if the Brees who showed up wasn't the guy who has dominated the league over the past decade. While their two-week start to the season hasn't been especially impressive, they are still in that discussion until proven otherwise.
Bridgewater faces a pair of tough games over the next two weeks, given that the Saints travel to face the Seahawks before hosting the surging Cowboys. After that, though, New Orleans' four games before the bye come against the Bucs, Jags, Bears and Cardinals. Those are winnable games. Five of the Saints' six games against the NFC South come after the Week 9 bye. If the six-week time frame holds, Brees should be ready to return in Week 10 for what could be a critical divisional matchup at home against the Falcons.
Unlike the AFC North, where the Steelers are already two games behind the Ravens, the NFC South is off to a slow start. The Falcons are 1-1 and needed a rash of Eagles injuries and a fourth-down conversion to avoid starting 0-2. The Bucs are 1-1. The Panthers lost their first two games of the season at home and don't appear to have a healthy starting quarterback. The Saints could easily still be the best team in the division with Bridgewater at quarterback, let alone once Brees returns.
What the injury does do is limit the Saints' ceiling. Their chances of going 13-3 again and claiming the top seed in the NFC without Brees are limited. While FPI gave them a 19.4% chance of finishing with the No. 1 seed in the NFC before the season began, those chances have dropped to 4.6% after losing Brees and falling to the Rams. Los Angeles now has a 32.7% chance of finishing with the top seed in the NFC.
The Saints still have a 53.5% chance of winning the South and 59.4% shot of making it to the postseason, but it seems likely that they'll need to win at least one game away from New Orleans in January to get Brees back to the Super Bowl. For all the magic Brees has worked during his incredible run in New Orleans, the future Hall of Famer is just 1-5 on the road in the postseason, with his lone win coming by two points in the wild-card round against
Nick Foles.
This balanced Saints team might be less susceptible to January weather than the pass-happy Saints offenses of the past, but in famous losses to the Seahawks and 49ers, it was the defense that let down the team, not Brees. The star quarterback has played otherworldly football during his time in New Orleans, but the team's recent surge of dominance has come once his defense finally caught up. Now, with Brees absent and questions about Bridgewater, the Saints will need to rely more heavily upon that defense to stay afloat until their star quarterback return.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/27630708/barnwell-all-fallout-big-ben-brees-injuries