What went wrong …
1 The whole defense — The entire thing. Every single play. The Saints made New England look like a Pop Warner team last night, running over, around and through them with the ball. Drew Brees is ridiculous. Marques Colston is a lot like Randy Moss. Pierre Thomas is one of the NFL’s underappreciated gems. And Reggie Bush wasn’t even on the field. New Orleans is really, really good.
2 Turnovers — Poorly thrown interceptions??Big runbacks after them??Those aren’t things New England teams give to their opponents. The gap between the teams’ secondaries was far too big last night. That’s gotta change — if it doesn’t, the AFC playoffs will be short.
3 Hoyer time — It’s cute when they’re winning. But nobody likes seeing a backup QB on the field when their team is losing. Salt in the wound there.
What went right for the Pats …
1 He’s still tough — Laurence Maroney continues to impress us, despite his foibles. Multiple TD runs against a pretty good defense??We’ll take that come playoff time.
2 Record-setting — Nobody really doubted that Tom Brady is the best QB in Patriots history, but he made it official last night. The New England signal-caller broke Drew Bledsoe’s franchise record of 29,657 passing yards when he landed an 11-yard pass in Sam Aiken’s hands during the third quarter against New Orleans.
3 Not that bad — We know. You’re down today. You should be — your team lost, and didn’t look especially awesome doing it. But it wasn’t that bad. The Saints came out flying, playing like that “team of destiny” you hear so much about. Nobody was coming into the Superdome and winning last night. Nobody.
4 Extra targets — A final silver lining: Aiken is a decent pass-catcher, and the Pats will need as many of them as they can muster as the season nears its conclusion. The North Carolina product entered last night’s game with nine catches in nine games, and he basically matched his season production, all at once.
