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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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Danno

frydaddy

Nice one Danno. Ron Swanson, greatest TV character of all time.

The Dude

Treadwell who?

Danno

Then again, maybe he ran the wrong route and just didn't tell anybody.

Crusader

Fake it 'til you make it!

QBREES9

Perfect!

Seer1

I'd have bitten my computer if we went for Treadwho in the first, but couldn't understand why anyone was complaining about grabbing Thomas in the second. Of course I've had the pleasure of watching him a lot these past couple of years and if he stays healthy...

Rugby Saint II

hagan714

he may have not been atop my board but I understand the pick. The saints loved him early on. So I can not knock the pick so much and can not wait to see if he will benefit from having Drew as a QB rather than the wild shuffle at QB he had at OSU, That is why I was gun shy of the kid. Not sure what you get but saints seem to know.

This should be fun to watch.