Brees’ presence a reminder of how rare Saints struggles are

NEW ORLEANS – The loudest cheer in the Superdome on Thursday night came at halftime.

Drew Brees left the NBC broadcast booth long enough to be honored on the field at halftime of the New Orleans Saints game against the Buffalo Bills.

A video tribute recapped some of the most significant moments of Brees’ career and the former Saints quarterback briefly reminisced about the special moments that he and the fans shared inside the building.

Brees led one final, really loud “Who Dat chant” and then he had to resume his new job while the Saints and the crowd had to resume life without him.

The Saints weren’t shut out in the first half very often during the 15 seasons that Brees played with them. But they were shut out in the first half of this one, somehow trailing the Bills merely 10-0 after being dominated during the first two quarters.

Then the Bills scored two quick touchdowns and pulled away to a 31-6 win that better reflected the disparity between the visiting team, which is now 7-4, and the fading home team, which is 5-6 after losing its fourth consecutive game.

The particulars of the game aren’t all that important.

The Saints never had a realistic chance of winning this game because their offense never had a chance of making the game competitive against one of the best defenses in the NFL.

The defense was better overall than it was a week ago against Philadelphia, but not nearly good enough to carry the offense on its back for 60 minutes.

The Saints did take the ball away twice after not taking it away at all in the last three games. They won the turnover margin by giving the ball away just once after giving it away five times over the last three games.

But that merely kept the outcome theoretically in doubt long enough for a glimmer of hope to remain through the Brees ceremony.

Of course the Saints played with an inordinate number of key players sidelined by injury, which was undeniably a factor in their lack of competitiveness against an occasionally erratic but very talented opponent.

But the lack of execution from available players can’t be blamed solely on the absence of better ones.

The Saints have enough starters and enough professional backups as well as a good enough coaching staff to be able to score more than six points, to rush for more than 44 yards, to gain more than 190 totals yards, to convert more than 5 of 14 third downs and 1 of 3 fourth downs.

But they aren’t performing well enough to win games and mostly not well enough to make fourth quarters interesting.

“(Losing) just weighs on you, period,” head coach Sean Payton said afterward. “It’s something that obviously we’ve got to look closely at everything we’re doing and who we’re doing it with. And it’s not like new players are going to come walking through the hallways. It’s gotta be from within.”

It does.

Brees isn’t going to make another trip down from the broadcast booth so he can put on jersey No. 9.

Some of the injured players will trickle back into the equation, but that alone won’t turn things around.

There are still six games to be played, beginning with another Thursday game next week against a Cowboys team that has its own problems, and the NFC is still dominated by mediocrity.

So maybe things will get better.

But maybe they won’t.

Other than the halftime celebration, there was virtually nothing positive that Saints fans could take away from a night when thousands of Bills fans invaded what used to be Brees’ house and celebrated the thumping of a franchise that had beaten their team five straight times, most recently in a 47-10 outcome in their house.

But it’s Thanksgiving and Saints fans do have something for which to give thanks.

They should be thankful that performances such as the one Thursday night, losing streaks such as the one that could continue to grow and a season that seems likely to finish with more losses than wins have been so rare since Payton and Brees arrived in 2006.

Games, streaks and seasons such as these have been a little more common in a lot of NFL cities – including this one before 2006.