SmashMouth

The Saints are not good enough, not physical enough, not balanced enough, especially for an outfit that battled back to 5-5 after digging themselves out of an 0-4 hole.
In losing 31-21 to San Francisco on Sunday, the Saints proved they could play as well as they're capable of and still are not good enough to suggest there will be able to find a place among playoff hopefuls.



In a game that saw the 49ers return two Drew Brees passes for touchdowns, the Saints came up with enough positives to make it a 28-21 ballgame well into the third quarter (on the second of three TD passes thrown by Brees) before being overcome by a better opponent.

Brees' first pick had to rank among the worst of his career. His second bounced off the hands of sure-handed Marques Colston to hand the Niners a 28-14 lead.

For the Saints, there was the good and the bad, but not nearly enough good to handle possibly to deal with as good a team as there is in the league.

San Francisco Coach Jim Harbaugh talked about one of the keys being quarterback Colin Kaepernik's ability to extend plays while being pressured by the Saints' rush.

"There were a couple of big throws he made getting outside the pocket that really helped us,'' Harbaugh said. "The biggest adjustment we made was just getting back into the huddle faster to handle the noise level. Colin did a great job managing the game, speeding up the tempo.''

Brees had no excuses for the pick he threw just before halftime.

"You can't let them get an easy one like that,'' he said. "(Ahmad) Brooks did a great job. He caught that thing on his fingertips. I was trying to fit it in there to Jimmy and he made an athletic play. It was a big momentum swing. We faced a lot of pressure in the fourth quarter when we were in a down-the-field pass mode. Prior to that, our guys did a great job, balancing it all out with the run game and protection. We were able to get some balls downfield and make some big plays. When we got it back to 28-21, we got some opportunities offensively, but we weren't able to take advantage of them.''

Credit the 49ers.

"I think the 49ers are one of the best out there,'' Brees said. "We knew how physical a team they are but I felt we matched that physicality. We just weren't able to put it all together.''

Joe Vitt did not feel the interception before halftime "changed the game.''

"Football is one play at a time, one series at a time, one quarter at a time, one half at a time,'' he said. "In football, you're judged on how you play for 60 minutes. If we let one play affect us the rest of the game, we're unprofessional. We've overcome things like that before. It's the nature of our game. It's not a perfect game played like perfect people. We had our opportunities. I've got to coach better and we've got to play better.''

To Vitt, the challenge is obvious.

"We play a Thursday night game in Atlanta,'' he said. "That's the only thing we're looking forward to right now. A short week is always a challenge. So what. You go on. We're going to do all we can do to win a football game. And then another one.''

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