Are the New Orleans Saints better off without Drew Brees?
By Drake Lohse
The final straw
Finally, what about Sunday’s Wild Card Matchup with Minnesota? When he first went down in week 2, even the most diehard Saints fanatic, in the darkest crevices of his mind, wondered how much longer Drew really had.
When he came back, he came back.
Roaring. Torching defenses, setting records and looking like the Drew Brees that had stolen our hearts back in 2006. He closed out the season on a magnificent stretch, and we all fell in love with him again.
But closing in on the endzone, down 20-17 with a little over four minutes remaining, striking endzone paydirt should have been easy once more.
It turned out to be just as easy for Drew to commit the costliest turnover of his career thus far: all it took was a subtle tap on the elbow from Danielle Hunter.
It’s common for fans and writers to panic after a season ends the way ours did. It’s not fair to boil down all the Saints’ heart-stopping losses to the failures of Drew Brees.
But in all of those games, there are individual moments that fans, coaches, and analysts can point at, moments that could have shifted the trajectory of that game’s outcome had they gone only a little bit different.
In all those moments-be it the two NFC championship games, the Minnesota Miracle, or Sunday’s Wild Card-there is one common denominator.
Next. Saints: What to do with the team’s three starter-quality QBs. dark
The decision to return is all Drew’s, and no one would stop him from doing so. In the meantime, Saints’ fans will have all summer to painfully wonder if his grip on the ball was ever as tight as we thought.