NFL: Brees sets all-time record and decomposes Redskins-Secondary

The New Orleans Saints have won the Monday Night Game 43:19 against the Washington Redskins. The focus was on the special evening for quarterback Drew Brees. The 39-year-old overtook Peyton Manning for one of the NFL’s most prestigious records.

The encounter between the Saints and the Redskins was clearly under the conditions of the expected record for Brees. The 39-year-old overtook Brett Favre with 11:46 minutes remaining in the second quarter by a 6-yard pass to Alvin Kamara. The historic moment had also arrived in the second quarter with 2:46 minutes remaining. With the first pass of the drive, Brees found rookie receiver Tre’Quan Smith for one of the easiest completions of the season. The wideout had an incredible 9.61 yards seperation and the ball went over 62 yards into the final zone, which meant that Brees had surpassed Peyton Manning’s previous record of 71,940 yards.

The Saints held a 20-point lead, but the encounter could have been much closer. The Redskins already had third down stops at the first two Saints drives, which resulted in touchdowns. But where the first was defeated by a late holding penalty against Josh Norman, the second was a much more superfluous unnecessary Roughness penalty against Safety Montae Nicholson, which made Ryan Kerrigan’s third down bag – Washington’s first this season – worthless.

The Redskins-Secondary was once again exposed in a devastating way at the start of the second half. It was the third failed coverage for 46, 62 and 35 yards. Too many mistakes, with which you can only stay in the game against the Saints if the Offense can keep up with the pace of Brees and Co. However, this was not the case. Washington once again had no downfield game. Not only that, but the run never worked with an average of 2.2 yards per attempt.

The game got out of hand when Smith, who was under constant pressure from a strong Pass Rushes and the coming-out party of first-round pick Marcus Davenport, threw a nasty interception into the hands of Justin Hardee. He returned the ball to Washington’s 4-yard line. Here Brees even had the opportunity to throw his 500th career touchdown, but that evening the passing yardage record was enough for him. Instead, all-purpose weapon Taysom Hill ran into the end zone. Later, Teddy Bridgewater made his debut in Saints-Jersey.

The evening couldn’t have gone any better for Brees. The 39-year-old found an ideal rhythm shortly after a three-and-out, which was held off by a penalty, and had no problems reading and picking up the simple Redskins defense. Brees once again made use of some screen plays, but found Michael Thomas again with some ideally timed passes over the middle. The All-Time-Passing-Yardage-Leader was finally short for his 500th career touchdown, but never really had any problems on an almost perfect evening and made 26 of his 29 pass attempts for 363 yards and 3 touchdowns.

The quarterback on the other side had a difficult evening. Not only because he was in the shadow of Brees right from the start, but also because it was quickly clear that there wasn’t much going on. Smith’s downfield attempts were only successful with one pass to Paul Richardson except in garbage time. However, there is also a lot of credit to be given to the receiver at this reception. Furthermore, he lacked arm strength and a lot of precision on some passes. With two incomprehensible checkdown passes, he led Adrian Peterson and Chris Thompson into nasty hits immediately after reception. The negative highlight, however, was a 4th-and-2 play in which Smith (23/39, 275 YDS, INT, FUM) dropped 11 yards back to his own end zone without pressure, only to throw a hair-raising interception into the hands of Justin Hardee.