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Saints Quarterback Drew Brees

Q: How hard will this loss be to swallow?

A: This one will be tough. I think we are all still a little shell shocked as to what happened there at the end. We felt pretty good about our odds of winning once we kicked the field goal. It was just an unfortunate sequence of events.

Q: As far as your second half, it seemed like you were able to rebound there a little bit after those turnovers.

A: We didn’t get a whole lot rolling there in the first half, they did a nice job. The interception to Teddy (Ginn Jr.) was forced, and the second one was just unfortunate with the ball tipped at the line of scrimmage, that’s bad luck. Prior to that, we scored on the play and we didn’t have a guy set, which is unfortunate too, these big opportunities, seven points just disappear and in a game like this every point counts. I can’t say enough about the way that we battled there in the second half, we scored on every drive. It’s hard to do that, especially against this team, with the number one defense in football right there. So I can’t say enough about our guys and this team, just to battle back after being down 17-0.

Q: How quickly do you think you will get over a loss like this? What do you have to say as a senior leader on this team to some of the younger players?

A: We have a tight knit team. A lot of these guys are good friends off of the field, so it’s not like the season ends and everybody goes their separate ways, in some cases, but I think for the most part this is a team that really cares about one another and so guys will continue to spend a lot of time with one another. It will sting for a bit, especially as this season goes on over the next couple of weeks, feeling like that could be us, it should be us. I’ve been around long enough to know that unfortunately these things happen and you guys were there in 2011 in San Francisco, when we felt like we should have had them. But we’ve been on the winning side of some crazy ones too. Obviously with everything at stake with playoffs, it’s win or go home, we battled back. This would have been one for the ages if we would have pulled it off.

Q: Did you ever get over that loss in San Francisco?

A: You have to. When my career is all said and done, I’m sure that I’ll look back and say that one, the way that we felt about that team being a Super Bowl contender, as we felt that way about this team, I hope that I’ll be a part of a few more teams that I feel that way about too, and we can make a run at it. Unfortunately, sometimes experience is a tough teacher and things happen and you can go one of two ways with it, it can put you in the tank and pull you apart or does it unite you and make you stronger. That’s the outlook I’m taking, and I think that’s the outlook our entire team is taking. We did some special things this year for a team that was very young and very new with free agent acquisitions and such, I think that we exceeded a lot of expectations from people in this room. I think for us as we went along we felt like we were really building something, and I think that we have a window here where we can really make a run with it, if you continue to have a growth mindset that you are continuing to get better and constantly finding ways to strive forward.

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