New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - NOLA.com Drew Brees, Tom Brady make practice interesting for New Orleans Saints, New England Patriots defenses

Drew Brees remembered right away when he first encountered Tom Brady.

Brees said he was a junior at Purdue and Brady was a senior at Michigan. What Brees didn't relive following the New Orleans Saints' first training camp practice against the New England Patriots on Tuesday was the result of their encounter.

http://media.nola.com/tpphotos/photo...4813-large.jpg
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) draws a huge crowd of media after practice between the New Orleans Saints and New England Patriots on the practice fields of Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts on Tuesday, August 7, 2012.
Oct. 2, 1999: Michigan 38, Purdue 12.

"Sometimes you make it look easy, but it's not," Brady told The New York Times following the win.

Brees' reaction to the loss in the same story: "We just missed some opportunities -- dropped balls. I overthrew some people."

Fast forward to the present, and it's typically the former quote referring to how well Brees and Brady performed on a typical Sunday in the NFL rather than the later. Brees and Brady are nearly in a class by themselves in the quarterback hierarchy when it comes down to rattling off the elite passers in the league. Most will throw in the Packers' Aaron Rodgers. Some will add the Manning brothers.

But rarely, if ever, are Brady and Brees excluded from the list. The Saints and Patriots defenders understood once again why that is during Tuesday's full-padded inter-squad practice. And it's one of the major reasons why both teams pushed to practice against each other during training camp for the second time in three years.

Saints defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has spent numerous game weeks planning how to bust the spirit of Brees and Brady. He's one of the rare coaches to have befuddled both of them. Spagnuolo did it to Brees last season when the Rams stunned the Saints. And of course he did it to Brady in Super Bowl XLII.

Even though Spagnuolo may be one of the few defensive minds to shut down Brees and Brady, he also knows why the two quarterbacks are nearly impossible to stop.

"They run the whole show out there," Spagnuolo said. "Not every quarterback can process everything that they have going on in their mind. I have video tapes of both of them where TV cameras are looking at them as they're calling out signals. Their eyes are on the clock.

"They're looking at what the secondary is doing. They're finding out what the front is doing and they're getting them in the right plays. If you're one of the 10 guys playing with one of those guys on offense, you know your chances of being successful on every play go way up."

Hence, what happened to Spagnuolo's defense Tuesday. Spagnuolo chuckled when he described how his new-look defense fared against Brady in practice.

"I'm not sure we're ready, where we are, to go against this offense yet. ... They (Brady and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels) find ways to attack a weakness," Spagnuolo said. "You can only take away so many things when you present something defensively. Tom's so good at it. That's why we like competing against each other. It's a chess game out there. ... I think our players gain a great appreciation for a quality quarterback. I mean we go against one every day in practice, but then when you get somebody with different calls and a different view, we look forward to going against him (Wednesday)."

read more