Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas holds the NFL’s single-season record for catches, but he didn’t have any of them in Sunday’s loss to the Buccaneers.
Thomas was targeted four times during the game, but none of Drew Brees’ passes found their way to his hands. One of them was picked off by cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting to set up the first Tampa touchdown of the game and Murphy-Bunting said that he felt Thomas challenged him and the rest of the secondary before the game.
“We just played ball,” Murphy-Bunting said, via PewterReport.com. “We just played ball, man. I’m not the type to be doing the back-and-forth, he said, she said thing. But I took it to heart when I’m in pregame and I’m sitting on the bench and he’s walking down the sideline mean-mugging me three or four times. I don’t say much, but when you do something like that it’s like you’re trying me as a man. Now with all that taunting stuff that he does, all that muscles up and all that, he didn’t do it one time this game. I’m not going to sit here and trash talk anybody because he’s a really, really good receiver, a really good catch radius, he’s very talented. But at the end of the day you’re not going to try me as a man, you’re not going to try any of my guys as a man. We’re going to battle and that’s it.”
It was a frustrating season for Thomas before Sunday as he missed nine games due to injury and a team-issued suspension, but the last act might have been the biggest disappointment of all.