Saints prove they don’t need a perfect Teddy Bridgewater to win
The New Orleans Saints don’t need perfection from Teddy Bridgewater to win, and they proved that in their Sunday Night Football victory over Dallas.
There’s no denying that the New Orleans Saints miss Drew Brees. However, in his absence, Sean Payton and the entire team has stepped up, winning their last two games by a slim margin of just eight points.
Teddy Bridgewater filled in for Drew Brees starting early on against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 2. With all the changes on the road against a tough NFC opponent, the Saints were blown out. This wasn’t a shocker to anyone after Brees went down, not being able to even grip a football.
The last two weeks have been the Bridgewater show for New Orleans. He led them in a victory over Seattle. New Orleans was able to get two unconventional scores en route to a 33-27 win over an undefeated Seahawks team.
He’d get arguably an even tougher matchup in front of a home audience ready to scrutinize his poor play. Bridgewater was leading the Saints against another undefeated team, the Dallas Cowboys.
In that matchup, although the Saints didn’t find the end zone, Bridgewater did enough to win. Don’t confuse that with Bridgewater excelled though. On Sunday night, he wasn’t great. He did have an interception, although that was much to the fault of Ted Ginn Jr. and was taken down five times.
Overall, there were holes in his play.
The most notable was taken a sack to push the Saints out of field goal position with just minutes remaining. A field goal would’ve put New Orleans up 15-10, forcing Dallas to score a touchdown to win the game.
Prescott was sacked after a punt and couldn’t drive into New Orleans’ territory to get that field goal. That mistake by Bridgewater didn’t translate into a loss after a stellar game by the Saints’ formidable defense.
What Sunday night did prove is that the Saints don’t need perfection from Bridgewater. He ended the game 23-for-30 with 193 yards (95 to superstar receiver Michael Thomas) and one interception. The Saints as a whole failed to score a touchdown.
That said, Bridgewater wasn’t perfect, but after limiting a team that averaged over 30 points to just ten, New Orleans needed a time-manager and someone that’ll make the right plays at the right time.
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Bridgewater did that. He’ll be giving Who Dat Nation a much more confident feel heading into Week 5.