SmashMouth

Sean Payton and Drew Brees talk often about the eternal quest for a perfect game.

On Sunday, they nearly achieved it.

The New Orleans Saints weren’t perfect in their 51-14 rout of the Cincinnati Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium. But they were about as close as a team can get to fault-free football for four quarters in an NFL game.

This is what a near-perfect football game looks like:

The Saints scored on their first nine possessions.
They scored touchdowns on all five of their first-half series.
They converted their first seven third-down attempts and did not allow the Bengals to convert any of their six third-down attempts.
The offensive line did not allow a sack for the third consecutive game.
Drew Brees threw as many touchdown passes (three) as incompletions, going 22 of 25 passes for 265 yards and three touchdowns.
The Saints committed one penalty, a meaningless 5-yard false start infraction by Josh Hill on the opening drive.
And Thomas Morstead did not punt once in 10 offensive possessions.
“Good thing I signed my contract extension before the season,” Morstead cracked.



Jokes and smiles were plentiful in the Saints’ boisterous postgame locker room. The win was the Saints’ biggest of the season. Their point total was the second highest of any team in the league this season and tied for the fourth-highest total in Saints history. The loss equaled the worst setback in Marvin Lewis’ 16-year coaching tenure in Cincinnati.

“I thought we did a lot of things well today,” Saints Coach Sean Payton said afterward in the understatement of the year.

When Payton was asked if this was as close to a perfect game as a team could play, he refused to eat the cheese.

“No, this was a good game, but it wasn’t a perfect game,” he said while proceeding to list a couple of blown pass coverages and one blown blocking assignment. “Look, I’m sure there will be a lot of things that we like, but there will be a number of things we need to clean up.”

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