Speedy Ron

http://neworleanssaints.com/Articles/2009/12/QA with Saints QB Drew Brees 1223.aspx

Q: Mike Ditka said that when his 1985 Bears lost a game after starting 13-0, it helped them refocus and he thought that was a big thing. Do you look at it that way?

A: That’s the only way you can look at it. Yes, it stings more than a normal loss would just because of where we were in the season having made it so far undefeated and having a chance at a perfect season. You just don’t have many opportunities like that. You don’t know if you’ll have another opportunity like that, so that's why that loss hurts more than maybe one from last year, the year before or another year. I definitely think you’re right that you have to be able to turn it into a positive, somehow, someway. What it’s done, it’s clarified things, as far as we know that we win this game then we are the number one see in the NFC. That’s all that matters and that was a big goal on our list of goals as a team. That’s what’s important. Obviously there’s things from the team we’ve had a chance to look at and point at and say, check your ego at the door, these are the things we need to get better at. This is what got us beat and we fix these things we’re going to get back to where we want to be and even beyond where we were and be playing the kind of football we want to be playing going into the playoffs.
Q: Darren Sharper said after the game that maybe the game could serve as a wake-up call since the team hadn’t been playing that well the last three weeks. Do you see anything to that?
A: Has it been perfect? No. Have we found a way to win? Yes. When I look at the three weeks prior to that New England on Monday night, where we played very, very well, then on a short week having to go up to Washington, win one on overtime. We were down ten points on two different occasions. That was big. That was a big win and then going to Atlanta where on paper you say yes we should beat them because our record’s a lot better than them. We’re getting everybody’s best game. I felt like we got Dallas’ best game. Everybody wanted to be the team to knock us off. Like I said last week, I have been a team that was playing a team like that, you wanted to knock them off. Knowing the extra motivation there, I feel like we’re getting everybody’s best effort now. There are definitely some things where if you win, the things that need to get fixed or the problems or areas of improvement, it’s easy to not necessarily sweep them under the rug, but we still found a way to win. That could always be our response. We still found a way to win. This time around we didn’t even give ourselves a chance to win, being down 21 points in the fourth quarter, so there are definitely some areas that need to be improved. I felt that today’s practice with a day of rest and that kind of thing was crisp and guys were locked in.