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.


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

pakowitz

i think that was a very solid article... im not saying i love AB and that he is not a great QB... but im saying that he isnt the worst in the NFL and it is a team sport and not one person loses a game, the whole team loses the game...

LordOfEntropy

Good article.

tweeky

One of the best insider articles I\'ve read in a long time.
Wouldn\'t you love to sit in on one of those film reviews?

Now if we can just get all the Brooks haters to read it.

rusta

by god billy! that was by far your best post ever

you are right tweek, i hope the haters do read it and maybe finally see what we AB supporters (tweek, billy, myself, maybe 2 others) have been trying to say all offseason

BillyCarpenter1

Most everyone has probably read this, but it kind of goes along with the original post.



In the final 2002 edition of Jim Haslett\'s \"From the Sideline\" column exclusive to NewOrleansSaints.com, the head coach had his final press conference of the season with the media. Here is the transcript ...

Q: What are the injuries from yesterday\'s game?

A: \"Dale Carter had surgery yesterday at 4:30 on his broken forearm. He had a plate and seven screws put in. It will probably take two months rehab. He had some fragments also. Everything turned out OK. He will obviously be out a couple of months and we will start rehab on him. Kevin Houser had a stinger/shoulder injury. We will re-evaluate later this week and probably give him a MRI later on. That\'s the two injuries from yesterday\'s game. Ken Irvin is OK. He hurt his neck. We came out of it with the one major injury, but everything else is OK.\"

Q: Can you comment on yesterday\'s game?

A: \"I thought our defense played the best game of the year. The guys played well. We had a couple of mistakes by the young guys. We had one that led to a touchdown. I thought they played well. They ran to the ball. They executed extremely well. Special teams was outstanding again. We didn\'t execute very well on offense. We had too many drops. We had missed pass protections on some of the blitzes. I thought we ran the ball well. Deuce ran the ball well. I thought the line did a good job upfront knocking guys off the line of scrimmage. We just didn\'t execute the passing game well enough. That was probably the downfall.\"

Q: Have you had time to dwell on the year?

A: \"Obviously it is disappointing especially after the start. We started out 6-2 at the break. It raises expectations. It raises the level especially with the fans and the media. I think that is the big thing. We raised expectations and we didn\'t live up to them. We were 2-2 in the last quarter and 1-3 in the last quarter. That is probably the most disappointing thing because we ended up 3-5 in the second half. It was a lot of good football early. I thought the offense was outstanding early in the season. We struggled when we came back from our bye week. We probably weren\'t efficient as we were. I thought the defense struggled early and got better in the second half of the year. I thought special teams was outstanding except for maybe one game the whole year.\"

Q: What do you think happened in the second half of the year?

A: \"I don\'t know. That is something that we are going to sit down and evaluate. Starting tomorrow we are going to evaluate this last game and the Cincinnati game. We are going to sit down and evaluate everything. We are going to sit down with the coaches tomorrow and evaluate coaching and evaluate the players. We need to evaluate the film and come up with some answers. There are reasons why, but I think that is done over a lengthy period.\"

Q: Do you think the bye week was part of the problem?

A: \"I don\'t know. I thought the bye week came at a pretty good time based off the injuries that we had. I think coaches look at that more than anything. We probably didn\'t want a bye based on the way that we were playing. We were scoring points and we were clicking. We were playing pretty well. I think the negative is that we didn\'t make the playoffs. That is the most disappointing thing because it is right there for us. I heard some people tell us that it was a collapse. It wasn\'t a collapse. We didn\'t execute down the stretch by any means. We have a lot of good, young football players, especially on the offensive side of the ball that is going to be good football players in this league for a good time. It means a lot when you score a lot of points. It says a lot when you break the scoring record. We did win nine games. Deuce (McAllister) emerged. We have good football players in Donte\' (Stallworth) and Jerome (Pathon). I think there is a lot to build on for the future. On defense, we got guys like Charles Grant. James Allen played a hack of a game yesterday. Sedrick Hodge has played well. We have some things to build off of also.\"

Q: How much of Aaron\'s performance can you base off his injury?

A: \"I don\'t know if I agree with that totally. We lost Deuce. That hurt us some against Cleveland because we didn\'t have much of a running game. I don\'t think we are to the point to where we can sit there and ask Aaron to win football games for us. We are a good running football team that runs off of our play action. We probably throw more deep balls than anyone does in the league. A pure West Coast team dinks and dunks. There are some areas that we need to get better at. We need to get Aaron\'s completion percentage up. We need to get him up to the 60 percent range with some of the top quarterbacks in the league. He is up there in those areas if you go by yardage and touchdowns. I think what hurt us down the stretch is that there were a couple of games where we didn\'t run the ball well enough. Deuce\'s ankle hurt us to be honest with you.\"

Q: Did Deuce\'s ankle injury hurt more than Aaron\'s injury?

A: \"I think based off our football team it probably did because that is what we start with. Deuce being hurt and not doing some of the things we did early in the season probably hurt more than anything.\"

Q: Are you amazed at the teams that you beat compared to the teams that you lost against?

A: \"I don\'t know. I was telling Charles Grant today that this is not Florida playing Georgia and everyone gets excited. Then, next week you play Vanderbilt and you know that you are going to go in there and win the game because you have better players than they have. Everyone in this league have the same players. Everybody has good football players. Some have great players. Every week you have to come out and perform. When we played Minnesota their record wasn\'t very good. They were playing very well at the time. When we played Cincinnati, we didn\'t play very well. We stunk up the joint. We didn\'t deserve to win the game. I think it is based on when you play teams in this league. You can\'t beat anybody in this league. There are 32 good football teams. Houston beat Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh is going to the playoffs. You have to play at a high level every single week, week in and week out to be successful in this league. We did not do that.\"

Q: Do you think the team was worn down?

A: \"No, I don\'t think we were worn down at all. I think we have a lot of young guys who don\'t have a pure understanding of what it takes. You can\'t think that you are where you ought to be when you are 6-1 or 6-2 with two months left to go into the season.\"

Q: Does that become a challenge?

A: \"No, I hope it was a good learning experience from us. If nothing else, we learned in this last month that you are not going just going to walk on the field and win games. It is not going to happen in this league. A lot of teams are in the situation that we are in right now. Hopefully, we are young enough to where we can learn from that.\"

Q: Do you understand why fans were upset yesterday?

A: \"I understand why they were upset. I\'ll say this about our fans. Our fans help us win games. They helped us win the Tampa game. It is hard to hear in that stadium when they are out there in full force. They do help us win games. I understand the frustration that they go through. I thought we probably build up our expectations when we were 6-2 going into the bye week. The expectations for the next two months are that we are going to the Super Bowl or we are going to the playoffs. You are going to do this. You are going to do that. The thing I didn\'t really didn\'t understand is that they were booing before we even took a snap. I have been in the league long enough. Terry Bradshaw got booed when I was growing up in Pittsburgh. Quarterbacks get booed. I tried to tell Aaron that it happens. The point I was trying to get across was that we are right in the middle of this thing. We are trying to win this thing. We were trying to make it into the playoffs. We hadn\'t even taken a snap yet. That is the part that I couldn\'t understand. I do understand the frustration, but at that time I didn\'t.\"

Q: Do you believe it is different here because of the struggles?

A: \"I\'ll tell you where I have coaches. I started coaching in the World League, so I have no history. I went to the Raiders who have a great history. They have a lot of Super Bowls. I was with a great organization. I came here after that with a not so great tradition. I went to Pittsburgh after that and had a great tradition. Then, I came back here. We are trying to build here what those teams have had. That is all this coaching staff, this organization, and these players are trying to achieve. I have a picture that Mickey (Loomis) gave me in my office of Chuck Noll with his four Super Bowl trophies. I would like to get one. I would like to bring one to this city so that we can take pride in this city, so we can have a past history. I have talked to Mickey about doing things in the organization like naming buildings after ex-players or ex-general managers. We just need to do things so players can come back and have pride in this organization. I think that is something that we are trying to build. I worked for two organizations that have had great traditions and had a lot of Super Bowl trophies, so I never saw the frustration until I got here. That is what we are trying to build here. I want the fans to know that we are trying to build something here that they can really be proud of.\"

Q: Do you think the booing affected Aaron?

A: \"If you are 26 years old and started two years in the league, then you can say what you want. I don\'t know if it did, but you need to think about it because he has only played two years in the league.\"

Q: What do you say to the fans who were chanting for Jake Delhomme to play?

A: \"The guy who got us nine wins was the same guy that quarterbacked that game. The same guy that took us down from our own five yard line to win the game the first time against Carolina was the same guy who played quarterback in that game. I have the utmost confidence in Aaron and I think our whole football team does. I know our players do. I know the people upstairs do. I thought Aaron gave us the best chance to win that football game.\"

Q: did you have it in your mind before the game to stick with Aaron?

A: \"I don\'t sit there before a game and think that I am going to replace people. I don\'t coach that way. I don\'t think you should coach that way. If you don\'t have trust in your players, then you have a problem.\"

Q: Do you find it different subbing a quarterback?

A: \"He is the general. He is the boss. Usually during a war you don\'t take the general out and give him a break and let the sergeant run it. That is how I look at it.\"

Q: Did you see anything different in the way Aaron was throwing the ball?

A: \"No. I saw dropped balls. I saw him get out of trouble because we missed a block on a blitz. I saw Jake Reed wide open for a touchdown to win the game, but we missed two blocks. Aaron had to run for his life. I saw some bad balls thrown. I saw a lot of other things happen also.\"

Q: Did you see anything wrong with his mechanics?

A: \"I ran throw the tapes fast because we are doing the film evaluation tomorrow, so I didn\'t sit there and study it.\"

Q: Last year there were a lot of off-season changes. Do you anticipate a lot of off-season changes occurring this off-season?

A: \"If you\'re in this league long enough and especially nowadays because of free agency and we have 14 free agents, I\'m sure there will be change and I don\'t know to what extent. We have five draft picks in the first three rounds, so I promise you there will be five young kids running around here and I don\'t know about the later rounds. I\'m just telling you about that. There will be some change, just based on the NFL environment right now.\"

Q: What happened out there with Bryan Cox and Joe Horn yesterday? Does it disappoint you when someone is supposed to be a leader and can\'t control his emotions

A: \"If you want to know the truth, Bryan was trying to knock number 97 (Kemp Rasmussen) out from Carolina. It was going to be one of those one on one deals. Joe was just trying to settle him down. It wasn\'t words. Bryan was fired up to play the game and ready to go and he was trying to get everybody else ready to go. It wasn\'t an internal matter.\"

Q: Aaron Brooks said after the game the game when he was asked if he needed surgery, no, but qualified it with not at this time. Are you sure that the shoulder will not require surgery?

A: \"I can\'t answer that right now. To be honest with you, that\'s something that we\'ll take a look at as a medical staff based on everything. We thought at the time after he injured it and the way he threw, that he was our best chance to win games and get to the playoffs.\"

Q: Can you comment on the play of James Allen?

A: \"I thought James played extremely well yesterday and I\'ll be up front with you on James. James gave up the touchdown, the only touchdown we gave up, but it was a young mistake to be honest with you. I thought he played outstanding, made a lot of tackles, played with strength and power, he\'s extremely fast. I think James will get better and better as he\'s out there. Another linebacker I thought stepped up out there was Roger Knight. Roger played third down for us and Darrin Smith and I thought he was outstanding. He stepped up and stuck his nose in the hole, made some good tackles, was excellent and if nothing else, I thought our young linebacker crew really did a good job yesterday.\"

Q: As you sit there and look back, is there anything else that you think you wish you had done differently during the season and yesterday?

A: I wish we won more games.\"

Q: Can you put your finger on any one thing that you think there is to it?

A: \"Not really, the thing that we got to do is evaluate the whole thing. I thought we came out of training camp ready to go, obviously the way we were playing. We had a letdown versus Detroit, then we fought back and played good football. It just didn\'t click as well as we did after the bye week. If you look at our numbers, especially on the offensive side, we had outstanding numbers points wise, touchdowns, rushing, Deuce\'s (McAllister) rushing total, even the passing numbers were outstanding, but we dropped in some areas. In some ranked categories, we probably ranked pretty good, but the red zone, third down, we dropped a little. That\'s areas…We ended up plus in turnover ratio. We ended up in good shape even in that. We were trying to get in the double digit turnover ratio. That\'s some things that we need to improve on. The thing I\'m going to say is this is all directed at the offense obviously. I think we got a quarterback that\'s played two years, a running back that started one, a receiver that has started three, another that started one and another that started two. Our offensive line is the same except for Jerry (Fontenot) in age, so I think all those players are skilled players and our offense will get better just because another year under the system there will be more continuity. We threw this group together fast last year. They didn\'t get a chance to play together. We\'ll get better in all those areas.\"



Q: Is getting more speed a crucial part of improving on defense and have you been considering a move to a 3-4 defense?

A: \"We haven\'t discussed anything yet. That\'s something that we\'ll do in the next three or four weeks. We\'re for anything that makes us better, but I think we do need more speed on defense to complement our offense. We got to get more speed and that\'s areas myself, Mickey (Loomis) and Rick (Mueller) will address in the upcoming draft.\"

Q: Do you and Ricky Venturi feel more comfortable running a 3-4 defense?

A: \"It doesn\'t make a difference. I played in it. I coached in it. Rick coached in a 3-4. We\'re going to do what\'s best for this team. If we feel we have better players to run a four man line we\'ll do that. Right now, I think with some of the young ends we have like Charles Grant and Darren Howard and Willie Whitehead, it would be hard to do that right now.\"

Q: Would the switch take a week to decide or a month?

A: \"Three days.\"

Q: In the off-season last year, you acknowledged that some of the players wore down in the course of the season. Was that the same this year with some different players?

A: \"I don\'t agree with that at all. I thought we were fresh. I thought we were outstanding today effort wise. I thought guys were flying to the ball. I thought we knocked them off the ball, in both sides of the offensive and defensive line. We stopped the run. We were the first team to get 100 yards off Carolina. I thought the effort was outstanding yesterday unlike it was last year at this time. I hear people say collapse. I don\'t like that word. It doesn\'t fit.\"

Q: Are you hurt in the way things ended this year any differently than the past two?

A: \"It hurts from the standpoint that everybody thought we were going to be in the playoffs. Obviously we didn\'t achieve what we wanted to do and the ultimate goal obviously by everybody is to win the Super Bowl. You got to get in the playoffs first to even have that opportunity. So, from that point, it does hurt. I think anybody who doesn\'t win the Super Bowl it hurts somewhere down the road whether you\'re in the playoffs or you don\'t win the first round, second round or the third round.\"

Q: Did you expect to be in the playoffs?

A: \"I expected to be in the playoffs every year.\"

Q: At the start of the year did you realistically expect to be in the playoffs?

A: \"Going into the regular season…Every year, I think we\'re going to be in the playoffs every year. Like I said earlier, I thought expectations were raised to a level where everybody thought we were going to be in there, including myself and again I hope it\'s a learning experience for myself, the players and the coaches and the fans and the media that we got to learn that once you get to that level you got to keep fighting because there is no easy teams on the schedules. You got to fight each week, week in and week out.\"

A: Are you blaming the final three losses on youth?

A: \"I\'m not going to use that as an excuse. I just know that I think it\'s a learning experience. I think we can get better, if this ever comes up again, hopefully we learn from it.\"


Q: Will you encounter any personnel changes if you switch to a 3-4?

A: \"I don\'t know. We\'ll discuss and look at it in the next coming week.\"

Q: What are the positives that people can look towards?

A: \"I would tell our fans that you got a good young football team with a lot of skill people and I think you\'re going to see a lot of good things. I really do. I think you got a heck of a running back, the best running back in the NFC. I think you got a heck of a quarterback, skill people that you can go to, speed, you got a good offensive line. Charles Grant\'s going to be a heck of a player. Darren Howard\'s going to be a heck of a player, James Allen, Sedrick Hodge. You got a good group of young football players.\"

Q: Can you evaluate the performance of Keyuo Craver?

A: \"Keyuo played well yesterday. I think he\'s a guy that just needs to play. He got beat by (Mushin) Muhummad onetime because he had bad technique and he put his hands on him. After that he played pretty good on him. All those guys we drafted last year are going to become outstanding players.\"

Q: Are you worried about the label that the Saints can\'t win down the stretch?

A: \"I can\'t argue with that. We did it two years in a row, so I can\'t argue with that. That\'s something we got to change.\"

Q: Will that theme be stressed in the off-season?

A: \"We stressed all year that we got to win in November and win in the playoffs. If you can get to December and be in great shape we\'ll be all right. We had a chance. We were in great shape going into December. We just didn\'t play well. We didn\'t execute in December and we were right where we had to be going into December and we didn\'t do it.\"

Q: Are you trying to reverse a reputation here of an aura of losing?

A: \"I don\'t know. I hate going off past history. You got to look for the moment and you got to move on. You can\'t sit there and worry about what happened in the past. I said it in the past and I\'ll say it before, what we\'re trying to do as an organization, as a football team, as a coach, as assistant coaches, we\'re trying to win a Super Bowl for this team, something. I\'d love to win a Super Bowl for this city period. We had a chance to get there in December. We didn\'t execute and finish the job. We didn\'t get it done, but obviously our goal is to someday, I won\'t say break the … But to have a trophy and have people come through the front door and see it.\"

Q: What is the team\'s schedule now?

A: \"That\'s a good question. I wasn\'t really ready for this. I thought we\'d be playing this week. We\'re going to work today and tomorrow, take Wednesday off and come back Thursday and Friday and then I don\'t know after that. We\'ll go to the Senior Bowl, in fact our number one goal right now is to accumulate some talent, so we\'ll sit down as a staff and figure out what direction we\'re going in,. We\'re going to do some film evaluation, some coaches evaluation, some things that we need to clean up today and tomorrow. We\'re going to sit down, myself, Mickey (Loomis), Rick (Mueller), Russ (Ball) and Mr. Benson and just kind of go over the whole makeup of our football team this week.\"

Q: Do you anticipate any staff changes?

A: \"I don\'t know. I don\'t want to scare them, but probably not unless it\'s self, but that\'s something. We\'ll take a look at all of that.\"


Q: Did you meet with the players today?

A: \"I met with the players all day today. Myself, they took exit physicals, met with their assistant coaches, the special teams coach and coordinators. They did all that today.\"

Q: Did you talk to Mr. Benson today?

A: \"I talked to him last night until six o\'clock at length.\"

Q: How was he?

A: \"He was fine yesterday.\"

Q: Does your role change with the departure of Randy Mueller?

A: \"We still interact with the scouts and personnel people and see what kind of players we need in the evaluation process whether it\'s the draft or free agency. We try to figure out what\'s best for this team. I had enough last year and the year before. I\'ve always been involved and always been included. I don\'t have to make the final decision. One thing about our group, myself and Rick (Mueller) and Russ (Ball), I don\'t know Russ that well yet and Mickey (Loomis), we\'ll all be in agreement for exactly what we need to make this team better.\"

Q: What happened yesterday on Mark Fields\' sack?

A: \"Our running back missed a block.\"

Q: How did you feel when the boos starting coming at Aaron Brooks?

A: \"I was kind of caught off guard to be honest with you and that\'s why I said those things. I was caught off guard. I kind of figured and I\'ll give you myself growing up in Pittsburgh with Terry Bradshaw. I think all quarterbacks at some time in there career…Terry Bradshaw to me was the greatest quarterback ever because he got four Super Bowls, forget stats and all that, he got four rings and usually that happens in the fourth quarter and third quarter when things aren\'t going very well.\"

ssmitty

remember haslett also said they were going after a safety........there will always be a good reason to explain a move that most will buy, even a fabricated one.....smitty

FWtex

Did they happen to see anything on that film that showed leadership by Brooks? I remember when this first came out and I thought then and now the coaches were telling the fans how vulnerable Brooks is mentally and they treat him with kid gloves. Since then they have kept Brooks away from the media. When are they going to let/make the guy mature. Maybe having him defend himself will help him develop self responsibilty on the feild and grow more as a leader.

LordOfEntropy

I dunno. The spotlight... the media..... I dunno. I have to remember that this guy is still pretty much just a kid. No, the more I think about it, the more I believe the media would just be a negative distraction, more so than a growth opportunity.

No, I belive they\'re doing the best thing by keeping him out of it, keep him concentrating on football. Let Vick be the media hound, see if he can get his head screwed up by it. Keep Aaron out of it.

FWtex

Thy Lord, I agree to a point but Brooks is not a youngster anymore. He has had the reigns of this team for 2 full seasons now and it is time for him to act like a leader. Up here in Jerry land even quincy carter faces the music in the press - and I must say he handels it much better than Brooks.

My big question is can Brooks take control of this team? Second biggest is when will the coaches allow Brooks to take control? And third biggest is when will Brooks take control?

When Brooks sees he has to cover his own back, and learn how to cover his back I think he will make great strides at being a leader of this team. I hope this is the year the saints make a man out of Brooks.