SmashMouth

Drew Brees stood behind the center and scanned the New Orleans Saints defense before the snap. He then looked to his right, toward receiver Michael Thomas.

What happened next gave Brees further belief in the second-round drafted rookie receiver out of Ohio State. Thomas, in the span of six organized team activity workouts over the last two weeks, has shown the potential the Saints brass saw in him as a replacement for released 10-year veteran Marques Colston.

"His improvement over these six practices has been awesome," Brees said after the Thursday workout. "From day one until now, the same mistakes are not being made. He's on to the next set of challenges, and he's continuing to progress well."




But what happened on that one play Thursday impressed Brees more than anything.

He raved about it after the workout.

It was a third-down play on which the Saints put seven defenders even with the first-down marker. The call was for Thomas to run an 18-yard out route.

But, with an unspoken visual cue, Brees told Thomas to take another route.

"I gave him a route that we have literally never repped before together," Brees said. "In fact, I don't think we'd ever even talked about it. But I was just in the moment, and he's my guy at that position, so I gave him the signal. He goes and makes the play and ran the route just like I imagined."

Instead of taking a right turn toward the sideline at 18 yards from the line of scrimmage, Thomas took a couple hard stutter steps to trick the defender into thinking the turn was coming. And then he continued forward.

Thomas said it was important to make all his routes look the same before turned in any direction.

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