Saints quarterback Drew Brees said recently that the team has “all the pieces in place” to be the best team that he’s been on in New Orleans and he explained a bit more about why he feels that way on the offensive side of the ball during an appearance on ESPN Baton Rouge this week.
Brees acknowledged that the team is a bit shorter on familiar names than it has been in the last few years, but says that he thinks a few of them will become “household names” before too much longer. His reason for believing that is coach Sean Payton’s ability to build the offense around the players on hand and the more diverse group that the team has put together for the 2015 campaign.
“We look at our personnel and we say ‘How can we put our guys in the best positions to succeed according to their strengths?’” Brees said. “We’ve been a top-five rushing offense before. We’ve been able to hurt you down the field with our wideouts, we’ve been able to hurt you underneath with running backs and tight ends, so I feel like we have all those components. And when you have all those, you’re dangerous. You’re hard to defend. There’s just too many things to worry about.”
The Saints will need their young players to continue to thrive once they’re faced with actual opposition if they’re going to be dangerous, something that can’t be gauged until that opposition is on the other side of the field. There’s a way to go before we hit that point, but it seems Brees and company will be whiling away the hours in an optimistic mood about what’s to come.