3 reasons the Saints can still survive Drew Brees’ thumb injury

The Saints were prepared for this day. They’d spent the past two years cultivating the league’s best quarterback room.

So when Drew Brees left Sunday’s NFC Championship Game rematch against the Rams, New Orleans had no reason to panic. Teddy Bridgewater, a 2015 Pro Bowler, was the next man up.

Bridgewater didn’t dazzle in backup duty Sunday, throwing mostly checkdown passes behind a spotty offensive line and allowing his skill players to handle most of the heavy lifting against Aaron Donald and a dangerous Los Angeles defense. Donald had been the man responsible for Brees’ departure, slapping hands as the future Hall of Fame quarterback followed through with a pass, leaving him unable to grip a football on the sideline.

This put New Orleans in uncharted territory. Brees had started 206 of his team’s last 209 regular season games, and two of those missed games came after clinching homefield advantage late in the season. Now he’s set to miss approximately six weeks following surgery to repair a torn ligament in his throwing hand, which would leave him sidelined through the team’s Week 9 bye week.

Losing a perennial MVP candidate is a problem for the Saints, but they’re built to survive this — even if Bridgewater struggles to be more than a replacement-level quarterback.

New Orleans has the defense to handle a Brees-less stretch

The old Saints were the Drew Brees show. They would have fallen apart with a replacement-level player behind center. They occasionally fell apart with Brees in the lineup.

These new Saints, however, have the defense to be scoring-drought resistant. They held the Rams’ air raid-style offense without a touchdown for nearly 40 minutes before the weight of an an offense that struggled to possess the ball wore them down.

The less said about the fourth quarter the better, but there’s still reason to believe this group can stand up against teams who didn’t rank second in the league in scoring and total yardage a year before. The last time these teams met, the New Orleans’ defense held the Rams to only two touchdowns in the NFC title game and approximately nine points fewer than LA’s season average in regulation. That 2018 Saints team held opponents to 20 points or fewer 11 times.

The 2019 version has the bodies to be just as strong. Cameron Jordan, who had a fumble return touchdown called back thanks to some referee nonsense, remains a dominant force along the edge. Trey Hendrickson, who didn’t show much in his first two seasons in the league, proved a valuable counter-punch in Jordan by recording two sacks in the season opener and a third Sunday. Sheldon Rankins, who emerged as one of the league’s most disruptive interior defenders in 2018 before tearing his Achilles, is due to return soon. When he does, he’ll team with former Patriot Malcom Brown to give the team a punishing attack against both the run and the pass.

A potent young secondary sits behind them. 2017 defensive rookie of the year Marshon Lattimore can be left on an island along the sideline, while Eli Apple and P.J. Williams give the Saints much-needed flexibility against the pass. Throw Vonn Bell and the still-improving Marcus Williams into the mix and you’ve got a group who can keep quarterbacks guessing long enough to get ruined by that New Orleans frontline.

The offense can outperform expectations with a backup QB

Bridgewater was a low-impact passer Sunday. Even at his best in Minnesota he was more of a mistake-avoiding caretaker than a game-changing shot-caller. He’ll likely improve as his reps increase, through the dream of him resuming the upward trajectory he’d traced in two seasons as a Viking may be dead as he approaches his 27th birthday.

He looked unsure of his ability to make plays downfield in Week 2, often checking down and settling for short passes. Bridgewater didn’t turn the ball over, which is good! He also completed 17 of 30 passes for just 165 yards and failed to find the end zone in three-plus quarters, which is bad.

There’s a caveat here. He was hampered by an offensive line that struggled against the Rams defense, even with an injured Donald missing time in the middle of the game. That unit was called for holding three times in the second half. Bridgewater was sacked twice and hit three more times on a day where he had little room to breathe in the pocket. There’s reason to believe he can improve behind a line that’s rarely as bad as it was in Week 2.

He’ll have his share of weapons to help him reach his potential as a starter. Alvin Kamara remains one of the league’s best dual-threat tailbacks, adding value as a runner and as a slashing receiving presence from the backfield. His pairing with bruising back Latavius Murray gives New Orleans one of the league’s most powerful and versatile backfields.

The receiving corps is still headlined by Michael Thomas, but Jared Cook and a healthy Ted Ginn — who had his first 100-yard receiving game since 2017 in the season opener — offer viable targets downfield. Perhaps the most exciting piece of a post-Brees lineup is the guy who’d be elevated to backup without him: Taysom Hill.

Hill looked like a capable NFL quarterback in the preseason, but the Saints’ have best used him as offensive chameleon. He’s caught touchdown passes, run for touchdowns, and served in almost any role he’s been asked to fill for the Saints. If Brees misses extended time, you can bet offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael will find new unique ways to insert him into the lineup and jump-start a moribund offense.

This applies to the team if a hampered Brees comes back to the lineup at 80 percent, too.

They’ve got a few favors coming in in their early schedule, too

New Orleans has some tough games that may have to be played without Brees’ services. The 2-0 Seahawks, for whom Russell Wilson has looked like an early MVP candidate, are next on the schedule. The Saints will also square off against the Cowboys (at home) and Bears (on the road) before October is over.

The rest of the team’s schedule isn’t nearly as intimidating. Dates against the Buccaneers and Jaguars await in Weeks 4 and 5, and while their cresting defenses can trouble Bridgewater or Hill, neither appear to have the offensive chops to create problems for the Saints’ defense. New Orleans’ final game in October is a home contest against the Cardinals, who are better than expected through the first two weeks of the Kyler Murray era but should still struggle to escape the Superdome with a win.

Then comes a Week 9 bye before a four-game run against NFC South rivals. Brees is expected to be back by then, just in time to run through the most important part of the schedule. If he’s not, Bridgewater would have to face the Falcons (twice), Buccaneers again, and Panthers. That’s not the gauntlet it was in 2016; all of those games are winnable, even with an upper-tier backup quarterback.

There’s no way around it; losing Drew Brees sucks for the Saints. While this team won’t be the same while he spends the next month-plus rehabbing, there’s no reason to leave New Orleans for dead. The strength of this roster and the relative weakness of the NFC South will leave Brees’ team plenty of opportunities to stay afloat as he coalesces. If Bridgewater can showcase the growth that started to poke through the storm clouds late in his 27-9 loss to the Rams in LA, the Saints could do more than float as they push toward another playoff berth.