Saints Beat Packers – Drew Brees On Pace to Break Dan Marino’s Season Record

Update 12/22: Drew Brees now needs 402 yards in the Saints’ Week 17 game against Carolina to break Dan Marino’s all-time record of 5,084 for passing yards in a season.

It is official. I need to stop making predictions.

For any of you who wasted time reading my Saints-Packers Monday Night Football prediction, I apologize. As with nearly every Cleveland Browns game this year, and the Texas Tech-Oklahoma game, among many others, I was way off on my Packers-Saints prediction.

My Monday Night Football prediction: Packers 38 | Saints 31

Actual score: Saints 51 | Packers 29

However, I am happy about this result because while my heart belongs to the Browns and the Dolphins, the Saints are my favorite NFC team. I don’t root for them actively, but I would like to see them make the playoffs. And the primary reason is their quarterback, Drew Brees.

Yes, I am an Indiana fan and an Indiana grad, and I am also an unabashed fan of Drew Brees.

For the evening Drew Brees was phenomenal. He finished 20-26 with 4 TDs, no INTs, and 323 passing yards. That is a sick 12.4 yards per completion.

For the season, Drew Brees has now passed for 3574 yards through 11 games. That is good for 324.9 yards per game. If Brees is able to maintain that pace through the final five games of the season he will finish with 5,198 yards. The NFL record is held by Dan Marino, who threw for 5,084 yards in 1984. (Interestingly, Drew Brees is not the only quarterback chasing Dan Marino this year. Kurt Warner has passed for 3,506 yards this season, which also puts him on pace to surpass Marino.)

(Oh, and even more interestingly, though not of any interest to anyone but me, I have either Drew Brees or Kurt Warner on all five of my fantasy teams, and both of them on two. I can’t predict games, but damnit I can draft quarterbacks!)

Dan Marino has always been one of my favorite players, but if anyone has to break his single-season passing record I hope that it is Drew Brees. After watching Brees dominate the Big Ten while playing for my arch nemesis Purdue, I thought the Dolphins should have drafted Brees to be the heir apparent to Marino. However, the Dolphins made the same mistake as every other NFL team with a first round pick that year: they passed on the undersized quarterback whose arm was supposed to not be strong enough.

Drew Brees has consistently proven people wrong during his NFL career, and he is certainly doing it again this year. In a season in which his most dynamic offensive weapon has been nagged by injuries (Reggie Bush) and his most consistent receiver has also been hit with the injury bug (Marques Colston), Drew Brees is having his finest season.

And I can’t think of any better compliment to Drew Brees’ abilities than this: An IU grad and a lifelong fan of Dan Marino (a huge cardboard cutout of Marino is currently staring at me as I write this) is actively rooting for Drew Brees to break the record.

(But for the record, if any annoying Purdue fan posts “Boiler Up” in the comments section, I will ban your IP address from this site and delete this post.)

[tags]nfl records, drew brees, new orleans saints[/tags]

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