New Orleans Saints

Saints say he should be ready by start of minicamp in June

Even though he didn't get votes for most valuable player

Team tired of his juggling calls from colleges

Drew Brees has won The Associated Press 2008 NFL Offensive Player of the Year award after nearly setting a passing record for yards.

Think back for a second:  It's roughly Week 7 or 8 of the NFL season and you're kicked back in the recliner on a Sunday afternoon watching your favorite team. 

For the sake of argument, let's say you're a die-hard Arizona Cardinals fan and you're pumped because the team is having a great year and you might actually get to witness a home-playoff game for the first time since Dinosaurs walked the Earth.

So the Cardinals have the ball on their own forty-yard line and their driving.  It's the second quarter and they've got a 10-point lead. 

They break the huddle and Kurt Warner heads toward his normal spot in the shotgun position.  But then, before the ball is even hiked, Warner turns to the sideline and starts to run.  You watch in bewilderment as your potential MVP candidate ambles over to the flat and stops, assuming a wide receiver's stance. 

Then, the ball is hiked to Anquan Boldin who you didn't even know was lined up at quarterback because you were too busy starring at Warner and wondering if it's humanly possible for a man to look more awkward than Warner looks in a receiver's stance.

The next thing you know, Boldin has rushed for seven yards and Warner is back in the huddle calling the next play.  What the heck just happened? 

Ladies and Gentleman, allow me to introduce you to the wildcat formation.

College football fans are very familiar with it, as it's been adopted full-force by dozens of college teams.  But until this season, it hadn't made it to the NFL.  Now it's here and it seems like almost everyone is using it. 

It all started in Week 3 with Miami who, needing a reversal of fortune after a 0-2 start, said what the hell and whipped it out against the Patriots.  New England was completely caught off guard and the Dolphins blew them out 38-13.  That's all it took.

The wildcat formation caught on and spread like gonorrhea in a whorehouse.  If you don't think the NFL is a copycat league, think again. The week after Miami's big win, every team started thinking hard about who they could put in the Shotgun to take a direct snap.

It's really not that tough of a decision, either.  All you need is an athletic wide receiver or shifty running back.  If you've got one of those, put him five yards behind the center and snap him the ball.  If you've got a decent offensive line, you'll probably get at least four or five yards on every play.  It's pretty simple.

What's really smart though is what Miami has done with it.  They're putting both Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown in the backfield and making the defense choose.  One of them is going to get the ball, but the defense doesn't know whom.

There are drawbacks to the wildcat, though.  For one, it can't be run on every down unless you've got a running back/ wide receiver who can throw the ball.  It's also pretty easy to defend when you know it's coming.  If defenders play their gaps soundly, there shouldn't be many big plays.     

So basically, it's a gimmick formation that works five-six times a game if your lucky.  But there's something to be said for a gimmicky college formation making it to the pros.  Who knows, perhaps next week we'll see Kurt Warner running the option.     

For those of you waiting for Falcons rookie quarterback Matt Ryan to flame out, I've got news for you: It's not going to happen.  But he's a rookie quarterback in the NFL, you say; he's bound to hit a brick wall one of these days. 

Yeah, that's what I thought going into the Saints, Falcons game Sunday.  Two hundred and forty eight yards and two touchdowns later, Ryan was the winning quarterback on the field, not league MVP candidate Drew Brees.

A lot of that had to do with a miserable Saints defense, but that shouldn't and doesn't take away from anything Ryan did.  He was as polished as a shiny new black Lexus driving off the lot.

It's truly astonishing what Ryan is doing in his rookie season.  He's in the top half of the league in almost every important passing statistic, except one: Interceptions.  That's almost unheard of for a rookie quarterback. 

Rookies playing quarterback are almost always dead last in the league in passing stats.  Heck, that's who those spots are reserved for, rookies and third-stringers who are only playing because Tom Brady and Tony Romo got hurt.     

Quarterbacking as a rookie in the NFL is so hard that most first-year guys don't even get a chance to try it.  Usually rookie quarterbacks sit out a year before they try their hand. 

Some don't, though.  Sometimes a team is in such desperate need of quarterback that they'll throw a rookie out there and take their chances.  That's what Atlanta did.  That's what the Colts did with Peyton Manning and what the Cowboys did with Troy Aikman.

Both Manning and Aikman performed admirably as rookies, albeit on miserable teams, but both were clearly light years away from what they would ultimately become. 

Ryan's not like that.  He's good now and on a pretty good football team.  As a Saints fan, it's actually kind of frightening to think that this kid is only going to get better.  If he's this good now, what is he going to look like five years from now when he's in his prime?     

So what do we make of this phenomenon?  How can Matt Ryan be immune to the pitfalls of the NFL that have felled so many young quarterbacks? 

Maybe it's his attention to detail.  He supposedly as diligent in his preparation as Manning and Brees.  You know, the first-to-arrive, last-to-leave type guy. 

Maybe it's the system he played in college.  Boston College runs a pro style offense, don't they?  Mixed in now, I'm sure, with a sprinkling of the wildcat formation that seems to be sweeping the football world these days.  But as an overall offensive philosophy, they seem to be pretty cut and dry.  Perhaps that's what's helping Ryan to be so successful.

Anyway you slice it, Ryan has been an absolute phenom so far this season.  Nobody expected him to have the Atlanta Falcons, a 4-win team last season, tied for second in the NFC South with a 6-3 record.

He's so good that he might earn a invite to Hawaii after the season's done.  How crazy would that be?  It probably won't happen though, contrary to what my title says.  The NFC has too many great QBs: Warner, Brees, Eli Manning, Daunte Culpepper (wait, what?). 

But to even be considered, to even be mentioned as a possible candidate proves how good Ryan has been this season. 

So don't hold your breath, Matt Ryan critics.  He's having one of the best rookie seasons for a quarterback in NFL history.  And he's showing no signs of stopping now.   

If Steve Irwin were still alive today, he would have two words to describe injury information in the NFL these days:  An elusive creature.  I don't know if this starts and ends with the Saints or if it is a league wide phenomenon, but this season I've noticed that injuries have been going unreported for way longer than they should be. 

It began after the Saints' Week 1 win over the Bucs.  During that game Marques Colston sustained an injury to his thumb which required surgery.  Normally, a club would release that type of information after the game or maybe early the next morning.  But in Colston's case, it took until Wednesday of the following week for an announcement to be made.

Saints fans were blindsided, having no idea that Colston had even sustained a serious injury. 

The same thing happened today with Charles Grant.  Here I was early this morning, eating a bowl of Cheerios and minding my own business. I log on to nola.com to see what's going on in the city, and all of a sudden I'm smacked in the mouth with the news that Charles Grant is done for the year. 

Where was this information a week ago?  Why must the coaches hold out on us fans?  When the game is over and there are no significant injuries, we like to know that there are no significant injuries.  We don't like being surprised with season-ending injury news.  It doesn't sit well with morning Cheerios.

Anyway, delayed injury news is not the purpose of this post.  Injuries in general are what concerns me.  This has been the hardest hit Saints squad in terms of injuries that I can remember.

It seems like every week there is a new Saint going down.  And they aren't Cie Grant-type scrub players.  They're key contributors. 

First it was Hollis Thomas in training camp.  Then in Week 1 it was Colston and Scott Fujita.  Then later on came Antwan Lake, Sedrick Ellis, Tracy Porter and Aaron Glenn.  After that, Jeremy Shockey and Reggie Bush.  Now it's Charles Grant.  And that doesn't even take into account Deuce McAllister and Mike McKenzie missing time early in the year because of their own injuries. 

Granted, some of these players have returned to play.  But that doesn't make up for the fact that most of them missed considerable time in important games when the Saints could've used them.

Injuries are not an excuse, I know.  Everyone has them, therefore no one should complain about them.  So in that vain, let me say that the Saints have done a remarkably good job in getting to a .500 record after sustaining such a vicious bite from the injury bug.

I still maintain that they should be at worst 6-2, but that's another story for another day. 

The reality of it is that New Orleans is 4-4 and heading into the second half of the season where hopefully they can put their injury woes behind them. 

If they can't, it'll be another wasted year for the Black-and-Gold.  But if the Saints can avoid injury, they've got a shot to get in the thick of things.  With a stable full of healthy horses, there's no telling how far they can run.   

From: Yahoo! Sports In a year of prolific offenses, Drew Brees stood out like, well, Dan Marino. Brees came so close to Marino’s NFL record for yards passing that the New Orleans Saints quarterback won The Associated Press 2008 NFL Offensive Player of the Year award Tuesday. Brees threw for 5,069 yards, 15 fewer than Dan [...]

From: ProFootballTalk.com One thing we overlooked on Friday when reflecting on the outcome of the MVP voting is that Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who came within 16 yards of breaking the single-season passing yardage record, got a grand total of . . . . Zero votes. Brees received not a single vote. Of the fifty sportswriters who [...]

According to the Times-Picayune, defensive line coach Ed Orgeron is leaving the New Orleans Saints to coach with the Tennessee Volunteers. Orgeron will be working with Lane Kiffin, former coach of the Oakland Raiders, who Orgeron had worked with while at USC, and Monte Kiffin, former defensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The article describes [...]