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NEW ORLEANS -- A gift of a baseball bat to every Saints player Saturday by the coaching staff conveyed the message "bring the wood" to the Jets and the Superdome on Sunday.

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Message received. Delivery accomplished.

The result is a 4-0 start by "your New Orleans Saints"...a start as encouraging for the way it's been fashioned as the record itself.

As you looked at the schedule prior to the season, you would have been happy with a 3-1 start before the bye week. Instead the sprint out of the gate and a 4-0 record provides the Saints with a bit of a cushion before the season resumes and the schedule toughens.

In those four games many of the off-season concerns have been allayed, at least for now. The suspect running game has prospered. The re-tooled defense has congealed in a remarkably short time.

Sunday, as that defense was about to take the field for the first time with the Saints leading 3-0, there was actually an electric air on anticipation on the sideline and in the stands. Anticipation about a defense taking the field that in the recent past would have provoked dread.

It's not the "Dome Patrol" yet, but it's finally worthy of a moniker that doesn't include a profanity.

Two of its newcomers -- Darren Sharper and Jabari Greer --- have helped make this the best secondary in team history. Sharper providing the "grand larceny" of 97 and 99 yard interception returns. That makes Sharper only the second player in NFL history to have two 90-plus interception returns in a single season. The other...Deion Sanders in 1994.

Greer providing the type of tight coverage on the corner Saints fans may never have seen at the position that has been a franchise-long problem.

And while we're at it, a well-deserved nod to the personnel department that brought in free agents Sharper, Greer, Evans, and Hargrove -- solid upgrades at every position. And a draft that - though small in quantity - produced two quality selections in Jenkins and Morstead with perhaps more to come after careers resume when injuries heal.

All these players have contributed to a 4-0 start in which the Saints have never trailed in 16 quarters to begin the season. That ranks as the fourth-longest streak in NFL history since 1970.

One-quarter of the way through this season, making history is a distinct possibility for this team. Who would have thought that four games into the season the Saints would be 4-0...that they would never have trailed...and that in just the fifth game of the season when the Giants come here on October 18, it will probably be for each team's unbeaten season to continue in a game that this early could already have homefield advantage in the playoffs implications.

Wake me, shake me, when this dream is over. But right now we're all enjoying it way too much to be disturbed.

Commentary: Shake me when the dream is over | News for New Orleans, Louisiana | Jim Henderson | News and Weather for New Orleans | wwltv.com

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