WhoDat!656

Both teams are among the smartest, most well-coached in football, according to our Cold, Hard Football Facts Intelligence Index, which sizes up how well each team plays in situational football.

The big difference between these two teams, of course, is on offense.

Drew Brees still enjoys a full complement of great weapons and is among the NFL’s best once again in all our measures of passing efficiency: Real Passing YPA, Real QB Rating and Offensive Passer Rating. This combination has put the Saints at No. 2 in Passer Rating Differential, the Mother of All Stats. The Saints finished No. 1 in Passer Rating Differential when they won the Super Bowl in 2009.

Brees represents the first legit big-time quarterback the Patriots have faced this year. He also has fond memories of his last meeting with the Patriots.
Back in 2009, playing in primetime at the Superdome, Brees produced what might have been the greatest single passing performance in modern NFL history.

He became the first QB that night to produce a so-called “perfect” passer rating against a Bill Belichick-coached defense.

Tom Brady, of course, was famously stripped of what was, last season, one of the league’s elite collection of weapons. This year, Julian Edelman, former small-college QB turned NFL utility man, is his top target. -

See more at: Brees, Saints tough customers for struggling Patriots | Boston Herald

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."

homerj07

Sounds good to me.