🏈 The Saints Are For Real (Really)

Even without Drew Brees, New Orleans is in prime position. Here’s how they gave themselves options. [View in browser]( [FOX SPORTS INSIDER WITH MARTIN ROGERS] In today’s FOX Sports Insider: How the Saints prepared themselves for Drew Brees’ injury this offseason ... Spence vs. Porter more than lives up to the hype ... and a huge week for professional wrestling fans starts tonight. The general line of thinking in the National Football League is that you need pretty much everything to go right to make a run at a Super Bowl. You seek, find, develop, pay, support and ride a legendary quarterback, put the necessary tools around him, then keep your fingers crossed that fortune falls in your favor. You don’t do much to prepare for the doomsday scenario of him getting injured because (a) you have neither the time nor the money and (b) there isn’t any real point anyway. That’s unless you’re the New Orleans Saints. The Saints have the kind of Hall of Fame QB in Drew Brees that virtually any other team would desire and have indeed pinned their aspirations of bringing a title back to Louisiana on his shoulders. Yet the reason that the Saints may be able to survive the thumb injury Brees sustained in Week 2 — instantly threatening to torpedo their season — is because of a little-noticed pair of moves they made over the past year. In a deal that generated just as little hype as you’d expect given that it involved a back-up, New Orleans traded for Teddy Bridgewater from the New York Jets 13 months ago, then gave Bridgewater a fully guaranteed one-year contract worth $7.25 million this summer. No second-string quarterback has ever been paid so much. So when Brees went down, it created a new reality. Instead of the typical response of casting an immediate eye towards the following campaign, the Saints had options. [STORY IMAGE 1] Bridgewater has been far from lights out, but with him in command the Saints are 2-0 — both wins coming as underdogs, the most recent being a 12-10 triumph over the previously undefeated Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. “Bridgewater is one of the more experienced backups we have in the league,” [FOX’s Cris Carter said on First Things First](. “Sean Payton and that organization … has a good football team.” Yes, the Saints failed to score a touchdown and were mightily grateful for the outstanding boot of elite kicker Wil Lutz. And yes, Bridgewater took a sack on the final drive to push the team out of field goal range in a game decided by two points. But there is a difference in the NFL between a second-string QB who can come in and keep you afloat and those who will be over their heads so much that you’re toast. Bridgewater knows he’s back to the bench the moment Brees can wrap his fingers tightly around a ball again, but he’s calm and organized and he’s keeping the Saints in business. This result made him the first Saints quarterback other than Brees to win a game in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome since Aaron Brooks in 2004. “In this league, we know how hard it is to win football games,” Bridgewater said after the game. “No one said they had to be pretty.” Pretty or not, the Saints might be working their way into a perfect storm. They have the building blocks of a potential Super Bowl winning squad in place, the defense is sensational and Brees may be back spry and fresh within a few more weeks. [STORY IMAGE 2] The best bit, however, is that they are somehow still flying under the radar. This team, which came within one blown call of a Super Bowl spot last season and minus one miracle of a place in the NFC Championship the year before, is escaping the kind of scrutiny you might expect. For that’s what happens when your QB goes down. After Sunday’s win, all the talk was about the Cowboys. Because … it’s the Cowboys. Even in New Orleans, things are tempered. This is hardcore football country, but it is a fan base that knows enough about life and sports to not take things for granted. The Saints won a Super Bowl in 2010 and might have figured another chance would arrive before now, as Brees has racked up historic productivity. This could be their best chance since. They’ve had a tough start but have survived it admirably. At fivethirtyeight.com, the Saints are rated as third-favorites to win it all, behind only the Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots, even taking Brees’ absence into account. They have the fourth-shortest odds to win the title [at FOX Bet]( as well (+1200), trailing those two squads and the Los Angeles Rams, despite L.A.‘s shootout loss to the Bucs. “Having to play four playoff teams from a year ago to start the season seemed like a tough row to hoe,” NOLA.com beat writer Rod Walker wrote. “You probably would have taken a 3-1 record, even with Drew Brees at quarterback, right? The Saints got there without him.” With the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Jacksonville Jaguars the next two opponents on the schedule, things look somewhat rosy. In a league where unpredictability reigns and with the worst-case scenario having befallen them, the Saints have somehow found stability in the midst of crisis, which might make them the most dangerous team of all. [STORY IMAGE 3] Here’s what others have said ... Peter King, NBC Sports: “Payton loses Drew Brees, gets drubbed by the nemesis Rams, and then, with Teddy Bridgewater playing serious minutes for the first time in four years, the Saints beat the previously unbeaten Seahawks in Seattle, then come home and beat the previously unbeaten Cowboys. I watched Brees and Payton in a long quarterback meeting last season the night before a game, and it is fair to say they completed each other’s sentences; they spoke in a code that mortal men will never understand. Payton doesn’t have the same relationship with Bridgewater, but the new QB doesn’t turn it over much and though his accuracy isn’t Brees-like, it’s good enough to make the offense go.” Scott Polacek, Bleacher Report: “New Orleans has to clean up its red-zone offense (four field goals and zero touchdowns), but a stifling defense and simply getting the ball to [Alvin] Kamara and [Michael] Thomas however possible with slants, pitch plays and screens appears to be enough to keep the Saints in position until Brees returns. Mark Maske, Washington Post: “The NFC is a jumbled mess at the moment. The Green Bay Packers lost Thursday night at home to the Philadelphia Eagles. The Los Angeles Rams surrendered 55 points while losing earlier Sunday in L.A. to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Saints are without Brees. The Chicago Bears lost their quarterback, Mitchell Trubisky, to a shoulder injury suffered Sunday. The Seattle Seahawks lost a home a week ago to the Brees-less Saints. The Eagles have had their struggles with an injury-depleted offense. The San Francisco 49ers, idle this week, are the conference’s only unbeaten team. The 49ers?” [IN OTHER WORDS] - “I may have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me.” Carlos Carrasco of the Cleveland Indians tells his story of confronting leukemia [at The Players Tribune](. - Errol Spence Jr. outlasted Shawn Porter and then shrugged off Terence Crawford as intrigue surrounds boxing’s welterweight division, [writes Chris Mannix at]( [Sports Illustrated](. - [Scott Ostler at the San Francisco Chronicle captures]( a “beautiful fall afternoon marred only by a baseball game,” as fans and former players say goodbye to Giants manager Bruce Bochy. [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED] [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED]( Until this past summer, one of the longest-running sagas in the NBA was speculation about Kawhi Leonard's future. The sharpest prognosticators pegged the Los Angeles native to return to his hometown once he finally hit free agency. Well, he did wind up in LA, but not with the right team ⁠— if public sentiment is to be believed. Kawhi was briefly shown on the big screen at the Rams/Bucs game Sunday, and a decent portion of the fans decided to boo the Clippers star. Sure, it wasn't a massive chorus of derision ... but the overall reaction was decidedly negative. Clearly, Kawhi and the Clippers still have a long way to go to wrestle the city away from the Lakers and their fanbase. [VIEWER'S GUIDE] Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) An AFC North rivalry is renewed, with both the Bengals and Steelers looking for their first win of the year, while the Browns and Ravens lead the division at 2-2. WWE Monday Night Raw (8 p.m. ET, USA) It’s a new day for WWE, yes it is! This week, Friday Night SmackDown comes to FOX — but first, check out the “season premiere” of Raw, featuring Seth Rollins, Brock Lesnar, Rey Mysterio, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and more! [BET OF THE DAY] [BET OF THE DAY] Odds provided by [FOX Bet]( JuJu Smith-Schuster OVER 79.5 receiving yards & a TD: +225 Our analysts are expecting a big game from Mason Rudolph and his receiving corps as the Steelers host the Bengals tonight. Charissa Thompson’s Custom Bet Boost, courtesy of FOX Bet, is on the above line from JuJu, while Cris Carter’s pick is on Pittsburgh’s James Washington to get into the end zone himself (at +300). And if you have faith in the Steelers offense, note that Pittsburgh’s scoring total is set at 23.5. [WHAT THEY SAID] “It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.“ — Jackie Joyner-Kersee [FOLLOW FOX SPORTS] [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [YouTube]( [Instagram]( Download the FOX Sports app for live scores and streaming [App Store]( [Google Play]( Available on: [tvOS] [Roku] [fireTV] [androidtv] [XBOX] [Google chromecast] [tvOS] [Roku] [fireTV] [androidtv] [XBOX] [Google chromecast] Forwarded this message? [Sign up](. Trademark & Copyright Notice: ™ and © 2019 FOX Media LLC and FOX Sports Interactive Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Please do not reply to this message. If you do not wish to receive emails like this in the future, please [unsubscribe](. FOX Sports respects your privacy. Click [here]( to view our Privacy Policy. FOX.com Business & Legal Affairs - Manager Digital Media P.O. Box 900 Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900