BillyCarpenter1

Posted on Fri, Jan. 03, 2003

ANALYSIS
Don't blame it all on Brooks

Aaron Brooks is not the worst quarterback in the NFL.

Aaron Brooks is not the reason the Saints lost to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday...

I never heard the cell phone ring.

That's what happens when you try to call a sportswriter at 7 o'clock Tuesday morning after the final game of the season.

I didn't even get out of bed when my home phone rang about 20 minutes later. It was the head of the New Orleans Saints' media relations department inviting me to a film-study session with coach Jim Haslett.

Sounded interesting, but it was rainy and miserable outside. I went to bed late and thought this was going to be a class like one I'd suggested a couple of weeks before the end of the season, one that would give the coaches a chance to teach us lowly wretches a thing or two about the game of football.

Valuable stuff, to be sure, but I didn't see a big sense of urgency in getting over to New Orleans.

Until the phone rang again. "Haz really wants you guys to come over for this. It'll be worth your while."

A quick shower and a 90-minute road trip later, a group of seven media members were escorted into the inner sanctum of the Saints' practice facility.

Haslett greeted us, somewhat grumpily, by saying he wasn't going to defend Aaron Brooks. Of course, we knew that's what was going to happen, but he told us we would sit in the quarterbacks' meeting room with offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy and quarterbacks coach Mike Sheppard.

Over the next couple of hours, they broke down every offensive snap during the Saints' season-ending, and season-crushing 10-6 loss to the Panthers. They showed us what was supposed to happen, what did happen and why there was a difference between the two.

In short, it was a fascinating look at the inner workings of an NFL team, virtually unprecedented stuff in the sometimes contentious world between professional sports coaches and the reporters who cover them.

McCarthy and Sheppard gave us a crash course in the Saints offense. They answered questions, the smart ones and not-so-smart ones, and answered them all well.

When somebody screwed up, they didn't try to hide it. They weren't out to crucify anyone, but it was a remarkably frank look at what went on during that game, a game where the vaunted Saints offense didn't cross the goal line once.

You have to trust me on this one, folks.

Aaron Brooks didn't play that badly.

Did he play great? Probably not, but you can't pin the loss on him when you see all the evidence and see it over and over again in the coaches' tape.

• A wide receiver runs a sloppy route and doesn't create the necessary separation to squeeze a pass in. Another lines up in the slot 3 yards too wide, letting a safety cover him and the two wideouts to the same side more easily.

• The offensive line screws up pass protection and leaves Brooks with a defender tearing into the offensive backfield with bad intentions on his mind.

• A running back misses a blitz pickup, leaving Brooks to scramble for his life.

One of those came on the Saints' final offensive play of the game. You remember: the one where 66,000 folks at the Superdome saw Jake Reed wide open toward the end zone. Everybody saw it but Brooks, and you were left wondering if Jake Delhomme would have even been able to scramble long enough to throw the final interception (when a receiver failed to come back up the sideline for the pass and let a cornerback undercut him and get the game-ending interception).

• Brooks air-mailing one throw when he was indecisive on a read, but being on the mark for the vast majority of his throws. There were a total of seven drops during the game, including a pair that could have drastically changed momentum early.

It was a real eye-opener, to be sure. Listen to Haslett and the coaches after a game and during the week and you wonder if it's just them trying to protect their decision to invest all that money and time in Brooks.

See it in the coaches' film (you know, the views that Ron Jaworski says nobody can hide in) and you believe it.

Really.

There was no exchange of vast quantities of unmarked bills.

I think all of us, including three beat writers from the New Orleans paper, one from Baton Rouge, radio icon Buddy D. and radio play-by-play announcer Jim Henderson, were swayed by the presentation.

It ended with Haslett talking about trying to break the cycle of bad Saints football. It's the one that says when things go badly, change quarterbacks.

He points to the Mike Ditka years, when quarterbacks were changed more often than Osama bin Laden changes caves. Haslett thinks quarterback roulette is a destabilizing strategy, and he's right.

My paycheck comes from The Sun Herald, not Tom Benson.

It's not a beat writer's job to help the team he's covering. He's supposed to be objective. Our job is to praise where appropriate and criticize where needed.

To criticize Aaron Brooks and Aaron Brooks alone in this case is neither appropriate nor necessary.

Does he need some help in the leadership category? Undoubtedly.

Should he learn not to smile on the field after something goes wrong, and instead chuck a helmet or two on the sidelines in disgust? Absolutely.

Those who know Brooks well say he's as competitive as anybody they know. He's not the world's best communicator with the fans (through the media) but he's more than capable of running an offense.

Brooks has a lot he can do to help himself, things that can help get the fans off his back.

Ultimately, everyone knows that will happen when (OK, and if, for all you doubters) the Saints finish better than 9-7.

That's what will elevate Brooks up the ladder of the NFL's signal-callers.

But right now, Aaron Brooks is far from the worst quarterback in the NFL.


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Don Hammack can be reached at 896-2326 or at dthammack@sunherald.com.