New Orleans Saints Fall To New England 22-34 In Preseason Opener

Many questions surround the Saints entering this preseason. Could the Saints improve their defense, how were they going to cope without Marcus Colston, and who was going to emerge as Bress’ backup?

Now this was only a preseason game and to take a guess as to how the defense will do this upcoming season would be insane, but I can say we may have seen an emergence of a star in the making. Defensive End K. Edeball came out in the first quarter and was able to sack the Patriots QB not once but twice. This has been one of the most dominate aspects of the Patriots offence for the past decade.  No matter who they plugged in on their line, they still could gel together and protect their future Hall-Of-Fame QB. The only reason I make note of this is because their first unit played the entire first quarter and so anyone able to sack the Patriots QB has to be really talented.

We saw that rookie WR M. Thomas can be a dynamic asset to the Saints offense this season. It looks that he can become the “Batman” to complement “Superman” (Cooks). Thomas made several impressive catches from Grayson. It appears that the Saints have found their one, two, three punch (Cooks, Snead, Thomas) at receiver which will leave TE C. Fleener across the middle. This could shape up to be another big year for Drew Bress and that offense.

There is a long way to go before the season starts, but in this first preseason game, I felt that Grayson really could develop into the number two guy and push for the backup role this season. Grayson completed 10 for 16 passes for 133 yards.

The running game still needs some polishing, after all the Patriots do have a great defense. The Saints rushed 30 times for only 78 yards with 2 TD’s. Both TD’s came from M. Ingram and both were on one yard carries.

The Saints next preseason game will be Sat. Aug 20th (7pm) at the Huston Texans.