So I know that Brees is much better than his numbers led on from last night, but seriously, he looked terrible! He never looked comfortable in the pocket, and when he did get enough time to throw, he was consistently off target. The thing is, the running game didn't look that bad either. I mean, neither Bush or McAllister rushed for 4 yards/carry, but they had some solid runs, and it seemed like the passing game was the thing that killed their drives every time. Colston was ok, with one nice acrobatic catch, but otherwise their receiving corp was pretty lame. Did New Orleans make a mistake in letting Joe Horn go? I mean, the Saints O made the Colts D look so good I've even been thinking of picking them up. What do you guys think?

First, I think the colts defense is better than most expected. It also shows, speed kills.

that being said, the Saints do look somewhat lost. I don't expect that to continue...especially in the division they are in...but lets see what happens next.

it didnt really surprise me too much. the colts did exactly what i thought theyd do on offense. they dropped everyone way back and made the saints earn it underneath, and they matched speed with speed. drew brees was one good late play away from setting an nfl record for the lowest ypc of any player in nfl history. the saints are a big play squad and were not willing to dink and dunk it down the field. as the year moves forward and teams do not have an entire offseason to game plan for this offense, they will be just fine.

The problem with this matchup is that the Tampa 2 is the perfect defensive scheme for defeating the NO's saints. The number one thing that made them so effective last season was their ability to stretch the field. Look at Brees's game log and see the number of times hes connecting deep with Henderson and Colston.

Dungy's strategy was to play over the top of their WR's all night and take away the deep ball. If he can pressure the QB, which Mathis, Freeny, and Sanders did in remarkable fashion, it creates a lot of problems for the Saints.

I thought Brees looked great: 68% completion percentage and his passes looked good. The problem was he was forced to settle for short passes because of effective zone coverage by Indy.

The two biggest surprises to me were (a) how terrible the offensive line looked and (b) how terrible the play-calling way. How many times do you run the 3rd and 6 draw play to Reggie Bush before you figure out that you aren't fooling anybody?

Anyway, I think that this game is a model of how to beat New Orleans and there are some opponents on their schedule who are going to try to do the same thing. We'll see if Payton is capable of making the adjustment. He certainly didn't show us anything in the second half last night.

I do think that the Saints will bounce back from this. I also think that the Colts are going to have a much harder time against more physical teams that can play dink-and-dunk football extremely effectively (like TEN and JAC).

I sure feel good about waving Brees past me in my draft this year

One last thing:

How bad is Jason David??? He was the CB beat on the first Harrison TD and on both Wayne TD's.

I think its great that he had the 55-yd fumble recovery for a TD, but how tractable is it to run a whole season with a 5'8", 180lb player as your #2 CB?

As I said in another thread on this, getting burned that bad, that many times at the start of the season could ruin this guy for the entire season. It is going to be very hard for him to get this performance out of his head.

David will be the red-headed step child of the whole league now. That guy is going to get picked on all the time, and they'll probably have to go get someone like Aaron Glenn off the scrap heap as a desperation move.

I figure David will be riding the bench long before mid-season, unless he can immediately get past this performance. Judging by history at this position though, it is doubtful he gets past it.

The Jags already did that salvage job.

Well in the post game interview, David didn't really sound that upset. He obviously realized that he got burned again and again, but like Al Michaels pointed out during the game, he said he was too caught up watching Peyton Manning and trying to read him. He will learn to adjust to this different defense at least some, and also, Peyton Manning is one of the best QB's at scanning the whole feild and reading specific players. It probably didn't help that he was an ex-teammate either.

Last year, no one knew how to handle Reggie, which afforded him lots of chances to make plays. This year, teams know how to contain him. He's not the starter. When he's in the game, there's about a 95% chance he's getting the ball, so know they cue on him. The Saints are going to have to swith it up when and how they use Bush if he's going to be effective this season as the #2 back.