New Orleans Saints safety Darren Sharper never said the actual words, but he made it clear that he wanted a showdown against his former team, the Minnesota Vikings, with the Super Bowl on the line.
Minnesota let Sharper, 33, get away in free agency this year after he spent the last four years with the Vikings. Now he wants to make them pay for it.
“You know who I want, you know who I want,” Sharper said repeatedly on Saturday with a sly grin on his face.
On Sunday morning he expanded slightly on what it would mean for him to face Minnesota
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After conserving their energy for the past month, the Saints flipped that switch Saturday and lit up the Superdome with a spectacular display of offense, defense, special teams, emotion and intensity.
They decimated the Arizona Cardinals with a 45-14 rout that validated everything they had accomplished in the first 13 games of this season, the greatest in franchise history.
“So much for being rusty, ” Saints Coach Sean Payton said, practically gloating after his team showed absolutely no ill effects from the three-game losing streak that ended the regular season.
From a fan’s seat, NFL passing plays look pretty simple.
The quarterback gets the ball, he looks for an open receiver, then throws.
No problem.
Of course, if it were that simple, there would be many more “franchise quarterbacks” playing — and playing for a lot less money.
The truth is much more complicated.
Trent Dilfer, a former NFL quarterback who won a Super Bowl ring during his 14-year career and now is an NFL analyst for ESPN, helped explain why playing quarterback in the NFL at an elite level is as much about brain power as arm strength.
The following scenario is an example of the decisions New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees might have to make on just one play in an NFC divisional playoff game against the Arizona Cardinals today at the Superdome.
Hollywood — The Arizona Cardinals had made it a runaway against the Green Bay Packers, so there was plenty of down time for chat on the Fox-lot studio set of “Fox NFL Sunday.”
The Jan. 10 wildcard game would ultimately turn into an overtime corker, so shouted exclamations at the unfolding action would gradually begin to punctuate the low-key jocularity that typically fills the minutes between on-air reports.
The afternoon would conclude with the long-running game running up against the East Coast air time for “The Simpsons” 20th anniversary block the network had been promoting since summer — and with David Hill, chairman of Fox Sports, shouting, “You’re killing me!” at the monitors in the executive control room — but as the one-sided blowout turned to a thriller of an Arizona Cardinals victory, the stars of Fox’s football pre- and post-game studio show had plenty of time to talk to a visiting reporter.
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Saints Coach Sean Payton said tailback Deuce McAllister was signed to lead the team out onto the field and serve as a captain, but not to play in Saturday’s playoff opener against the Arizona Cardinals.
Originally, McAllister had agreed to serve as a guest captain for the game to help fire up the team and the fans. Then when defensive tackle Rodney Leisle suffered a knee injury, General Manager Mickey Loomis suggested that they should sign McAllister to the roster to make him an official part of the team.
McAllister, who has not been with a team since the Saints released him in February, isn’t quite ready to jump right back into the action, though.
“This is more about doing something the right way and bringing the guy back,” said Payton, who said he contacted McAllister about three weeks ago to see if he would be available.
NEW ORLEANS — The talent, the gaudy numbers and even the name have made it so you no longer have to argue that Drew Brees is an elite quarterback.
You can throw his name in any sentence that involves Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Brett Favre and Kurt Warner. In this, his fourth season as quarterback of the New Orleans Saints, Brees’ stock only continued to soar as he led his team to a franchise-record 13 wins. He belongs in any argument about the league’s best quarterbacks.
But how do you stop the qualifiers like, “Yeah, he’s as good as those guys, but what’s he ever won?’’ Or how do you stop the perceived snubs when Manning, who had basically the same numbers, goes out and wins the Most Valuable Player Award in a landslide over Brees?
It’s real simple. Brees needs to win big games. We’re talking big games like Saturday’s divisional playoff against Arizona and Warner, who has been one of the best postseason quarterbacks in history. We’re talking big games like the NFC Championship Game and the Super Bowl.
“Who dat?” is older than us all, but its association with the New Orleans Saints first flowered in 1983.
That was the season that an intrepid former World Series hero teamed with two enterprising brothers, a Neville and several Saints players to forever cement the phrase
Ron Swoboda, whose diving, game-saving catch for the 1969 New York Mets remains one of the all-time World Series highlights, had come to New Orleans to replace a legend when sportscaster and master grammarian Bernard “Buddy D” Diliberto jumped from then-ABC affiliate WVUE-Channel 8 to NBC affiliate WDSU-Channel 6.
One of the jobs Swoboda got as Diliberto’s impossible successor at WVUE was hosting a prime-time show — “On Sports” — that led into “Monday Night Football.”
Swoboda segmented that highlights-and-high-jinks hour into time for prep football, LSU, Tulane, and of course, the Saints.
If you haven’t already, you’re going to hear a lot this week about Kurt Warner’s glitzy postseason history.
Michael DeMocker/The Times-Picayune
Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner has great statistics in postseason play.
The Arizona Cardinals quarterback improved his playoff record to 9-3 in Sunday’s 51-45 overtime win against Green Bay. His postseason passer rating of 104.6 is second in NFL history to Bart Starr (104.8). He’s the first quarterback in NFL history to throw four or more touchdown passes in three playoffs games. He and Peyton Manning are the only passers to record efficiency ratings of 145.0 or higher in two postseason games.
By Mike Triplett, The Times-Picayune January 14, 2010, 9:19AM
Saints quarterback Drew Brees is backing up Peyton Manning again. Manning was named the first-team All Pro quarterback by the Associated Press, with Brees landing on the second team. Manning received 36 1/2 of the 50 votes by media members across the country, with Brees receiving 12 1/2 votes. Two Saints players were named first-team All-Pros — guard Jahri Evans and safety Darren Sharper. Sharper was a near-unanimous choice with 46 votes. Evans finished second among guards with 28 votes. Middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma and offensive tackle Jon Stionchcomb just missed the second team. They both finished fifth in the voting at their respective positions.
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