Saints' pass game lethal
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New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees looks to pass during the first quarter of Sunday's win against the Steelers.
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NEW ORLEANS -- Pulling a win out of this town as long as quarterback Drew Brees works here is an onerous undertaking in the best of circumstances, but on a Halloween night it's nearly as difficult as finding a sober person.
What you need, among 100 other things, is a monster of a play at a crucial moment, and Steelers corner Bryant McFadden actually thought he had made it.
"I think it gave us an opportunity," McFadden said of the Brees fumble he forced on a corner blitz in a throbbing fourth quarter. "It was the kind of play you need in this kind of atmosphere, but they came right back and made another one."
Three plays later, to be precise.
Saints linebacker Marvin Mitchell banged into tight end Heath Miller at the end of a 25-yard completion, snatching all of the swelling momentum from a Steelers offense that would not score again Sunday night in a 20-10 loss, their first on the road after three victories.
That the Steelers managed to hang around as long as they did was itself something of an accomplishment given the inconvenience that their normally excellent defense was joined by understudies at both defensive ends for this NBC showcase. Still Steelers defenders brought the typically impenetrable run defense, forcing the defending Super Bowl champions to wear the unflattering costume of a one-dimensional offense throwing the football around pretty much indiscriminately.
"They played one-dimensional, and they beat us with it," defensive captain James Farrior said. "Brees is just an excellent quarter. If you give him time to read the defense, he's gonna kill you."
Nick Eason was making his quasi-annual NFL start in lieu of Brett Keisel, only his 11th in eight seasons, which was exactly 11 more than Ziggy Hood, who was to masquerade as Aaron Smith.
They were plenty enough convincing.
By halftime, the Saints had all of 15 rushing yards and never advanced the football more than 22 yards until their final possession of the second quarter, on which Brees force-fed his skittish receivers until they reached the Steelers' 13, or until Ladell Betts dropped Brees' sixth pass of the drive that tied the score at 3-3.
When the second half began in much the same fashion, alarm bells rang up and down the Steelers sideline, by which I mean figuratively, of course, because had they rung literally, no one would have heard them anyway in a Louisiana Superdome pounding with noise from a virtually all-costumed crowd of 70,011.
First Published November 1, 2010 12:43 am
