The Saints moved quickly on Thursday to dispel the “100 thousand-trillion-million percent” accurate report from Kenny Wilkerson of WIST radio in New Orleans that the Saints are hiding the fact that quarterback Drew Brees has a small fracture and a torn meniscus in his left knee.
The evidence included a claim that Brees drop-kicked a field goal in practice on Thursday. More relevant is the contention that he no longer is wearing a brace or a wrap and he has not had treatment on the knee in recent weeks.
But since the essence of the claim is that the Saints are covering up the injury, the chatter isn’t completely going away.
The folks at Canal Street Chronicles have heard, via a fairly tight chain of hearsay, that Brees is playing with pain in the knee. On Friday, Len Pasquarelli of The Sports Xchange reported in his weekly Tip Sheet that several NFL defensive players have detected in film study that Brees is favoring his right leg, not his left.
“Watching him on tape, he almost seems to be a little tender when he’s planting with his [right] leg,” an unnamed defensive end told Pasquarelli. “I mean, word was getting around the league a little bit, you know? You look for that kind of stuff. Any kind of edge you can get, really. They say the film doesn’t lie, but maybe we were all seeing something — and I compared notes with some [defensive] line buddies who agreed — we just wanted to see.”
Our guess is that the talk will persist throughout the season, and that we won’t have resolution until after the season, when Brees does — or doesn’t — have surgery on his left knee.
Or his right knee.