Saints quarterback Drew Brees had a stunningly bad game on Thursday night in Atlanta, with no touchdowns and five interceptions. But Saints coach Joe Vitt says his quarterback is the least of his worries.
Vitt said on Friday that there’s no difference between the Brees who’s playing now and the Brees who has been with the Saints for seven seasons, and that Vitt is more worried about correcting other problems on the team.
“I think Drew is well-prepared,” Vitt said, via the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “He has prepared the last couple of weeks the same way he has prepared since I’ve known him in ’06. Again, sometimes you go on a little bit of a cool streak and you get balls tipped, you’ve got the ball potentially on the wrong shoulder of a receiver and something catastrophic happens. Nah, this is a great quarterback with great intent. His best days are ahead of him. Listen, it was a bad night for our football team, not just Drew Brees.”
Although Brees’s statistics aren’t as good as they were in his fantastic 2011 season, Brees’s 2012 numbers aren’t much different from his numbers in his first five years with the Saints. Brees is on pace to finish this season with 4,899 passing yards and 41 touchdowns. You can win a lot of games with a quarterback playing like that.
Unfortunately for the Saints, they haven’t won enough games, and although Vitt said he still has playoff hopes this year, that’s probably unrealistic. But the Saints are in better shape than most non-playoff teams. They know they have their quarterback in place.