Mr. Peter King gives Saints some love this week
Mr. Peter King, of SI.com, give the New Orleans Saints some love this week in his Monday Morning Quarterback segment on SI.com.
H ranks the Saints as #8 overrall in the NFL Didn't we beat the Steelers? Her considers Drew Brees as the #5 MVP candidate. Here is more:
• How did Pat Sims fall for No-Brainer Freeze? It'll be a long time before Cincinnati defensive tackle Sims lives this one down. Fourth-and-two, 34 seconds left, Bengals up 30-27, Drew Brees at the line of scrimmage, barking out signals for the Saints in a rising and falling cadence. The play is called "No-Brainer Freeze,'' simply, because every one of the 10 players aside from the quarterback is not supposed to use his brain, and every one is supposed to freeze. No movement is required because there's not going to be a snap, and the play is designed to have the play clock run out or the quarterback call a timeout just before it does. The Saints practice Brees' cadence -- sharp, then lower, then rising, then barking, then slower, then fast.
"There's no way we're snapping the ball,'' New Orleans coach Sean Payton told me from the Saints' lead bus in Cincinnati after the game. "We work on it. You try to bark it out and hope you can get them to jump. Against the Jets last year, it worked; we got their big tackle to jump. But usually teams know what you're doing. In this case, we were going to take the delay and then just try to kick the field goal to tie it and send it to overtime.''
But as Brees got to a particularly loud part of his snap-count, Sims took one false step across the line, drawing a Saints lineman across, and flags flew, and the Bengals got penalized, and Brees, on the ensuing first down, hit Marques Colston for the winning touchdown. "We work on that every week,'' Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis said. "We worked on it Wednesday. We told them the Saints did this and to watch for it.''
It's the kind of mistake bad teams make. It's the kind of incredibly miniscule, boring piece of practice that every player dreads. But on Sunday in Cincinnati, it won the Saints a game, and kept them within one game of the NFC South-leading Falcons. That's what draws me to plays like this. I love the minutiae that win and lose games. After 59 minutes, the Super Bowl champs were trailing a 2-9 team, and the crowd was whipped into a frenzy, and it was fourth down, and it looked like the Saints were going for it to win it right here, and here was the cool Brees drawing a lesser player offside to win the game. That's some great stuff right there.
Last week, it was Saints defensive back Malcolm Jenkins chasing after and stripping Dallas wide receiver Roy Williams that led to the Saints' 30-27 victory in Dallas. This week, it was Brees drawing a gullible lineman offside that led to the Saints' 34-30 victory in Cincinnati. That's how good teams play, and win.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/12/05/monday-morning-qb-week-13/index.html#ixzz17LlD0dbg
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First before I lay into Hall of Famer, Mr. Rod Woodson, I respect your skills and the way you played the game. Now, SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!
