SAINTS MARCH ON
After winning wildcard game, next up is Round 3 vs. Brady, Bucs
NEW ORLEANS — Drew Brees will get to celebrate his 42nd birthday by preparing for a playoff game that will also feature the one active NFL quarterback older than him.
Brees completed 28 of 39 passes for 265 yards, connecting with Michael Thomas and Latavius Murray for touchdowns, and the New Orleans Saints defeated the Chicago Bears 21-9 in an NFC wild-card game Sunday.
The victory for the Saints (13-4) and Brees, who turns 42 on Friday, sets up a divisional-round meeting next weekend in the Superdome with Tampa Bay and 43-year-old QB Tom Brady. The Saints won both regular season matchups with their NFC South rival by double digits.
“The minute that he signed with the Bucs and came to the division, you felt like that was going to be a team to contend with, that was going to be a team that would have playoff aspirations and beyond, just like us,” Brees said of meeting Brady in the playoffs for the first time. “So, I guess it was inevitable.”
Alvin Kamara rushed for 99 yards and added a 3-yard touchdown run for insurance points in the fourth quarter after sitting out the regularseason finale and not practicing this past week because of contracting COVID-19.
“I was fine, no real symptoms,” Kamara said of his absence. “I got a bye week. It’s like, you have no choice but to sit and recover and get your body back right. I felt good.”
The Bears (8-9) put forth a scrappy performance defensively that prevented the Saints from building more than a one-touchdown lead until Murray’s 6-yard catch-andrun score made it 14-3 late in the third quarter.
That score resulted from a big Chicago mistake: Safety Eddie Jackson, lined up for an apparent blitz, jumped offside on fourth-and-3 from the Bears 13-yard line.
“It was basically a no-brainer freeze. We were just going to take a delay (of game) and then kick the field goal,” Payton said. “It worked pretty well.”
Two plays later, Brees scrambled right and spotted Murray waving for the ball. Brees sent a short touch pass over onrushing linebacker Khalil Mack, and Murray sprinted straight to the goal line, diving through converging tacklers.
Brees’ first touchdown pass in the opening quarter was 11 yards over the middle to Thomas, who was back from a three-game absence.
The 2019 Offensive Player of the Year missed nine games this season and had not caught a touchdown pass since December 2019.
The Chicago offense struggled against a defense ranked fourth in the NFL, and were held to 48 yards rushing.
The Saints never previously allowed fewer than 14 points in a playoff game.
“Ultimately we forced them to become one-dimensional,” Payton said.