STEEP EDGE
Brees vs. Bryce a mismatch, even if Saints won’t admit it
ON THE s urfa ce it l ooks like a colossal mismatch. A future Hall of Fame quarterback in Drew Brees will be going against novice Bryce Petty when the Saints play host to the Jets on Sunday at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
Brees has started 245 games in his 17-year career and thrown for 69,680 yards and 484 touchdowns. Petty will start his f irst game of the season, replacing the injured Josh McCown, who is out for the year with a broken hand suffered last week in Denver. It will be just the fifth start of Petty’s brief career, after being selected in the fourth round of the 2015 draft. He has thrown for 823 yards and three touchdowns against seven interceptions.
Mismatch right? Saints coach Sean Payton isn’t so sure.
“We never look at it like that,” he said Wednesday. “It’s two teams playing. When you watch the Jets team and the games they’ve played this year, I think Todd [Bowles] and his staff has done an outstanding job. Each week you look at the game in itself and you look at the things you think you can do and the things you have to work on.”
Of course that’s part coachspeak. The world knows the Saints have a huge advantage at quarterback. Brees is 110-77 in the regular season since arriving in New Orleans in 2006 — which ranks second in the league behind Tom Brady, who has won 135 regular-season games during that span. Brees is having another banner season. The Saints have the second-ranked offense in the NFL. He ranks third among league passers having completed 71.7 percent of his passes for 3,569 yards and 19 touchdowns against just six interceptions.
The Jets have plenty of film on Brees, most of it frightening for a defense.
“He’s a Hall of Famer in waiting,” Jets defensive lineman Steve McLendon sai d. “He’s smart. When you’re playing guys like him, the best way to beat them is stay in their face and don’t let him convert third downs. He’s a student of the game. He’s almost close to being a professor. That’s how good he is.”
Payton recalled having a lot of interest in Petty when he was coming out for the draft in 2015 as a highly touted quarterback from Baylor. It brought back a fond memory.
“We had a chance to go down and have a private workout with him,” Payton said. “I took my son Connor to a local high school. He had a few receivers, including my son who was a freshman [in high school]. He had a couple of balls go through his hands, so he had to puts his receiver gloves on.”
The Saints will take a crash course on Petty in preparation for Sunday’s game. They’ll gather has much preseason film as they can and try to anticipate how the Jets will approach the game.
“You do what you can with the film you have and you prepare for the offensive system,” Payton said.
The Saints (9-4) are in the heat of a playoff race. They are tied with the Panthers for the lead in the NFC South after enduring a tough 20-17 loss to the Falcons last Thursday night.
“Hopefully, we can bounce ba c k and t a ke a dva nt a ge of playing at home,” Payton said. “Everyone understands the sig- nificance of every one of these games down the stretch.”
For the record, Payton says he isn’t interested in becoming the Giants’ new head coach, a job that became vacant with the firing of Ben McAdoo. Payton was a former Giants assistant under Jim Fassel before becoming a Super Bowl winning head coach with the Saints.
“I’m focused on this game,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of good friends back there. I’m sure they’ll make the right decision. It seems like a different universe when it comes to those other things. We can’t keep track of the regular news, let alone the sports news.”
The news in sports is that there’s a mismatch Sunday in the Superdome.