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Brees guides Saints past Falcons

Dec 11, 2007 - 6:03 AM By Phil Foley PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

ATLANTA (Ticker) - In a game that lost most of its luster, Drew Brees shined.

Brees threw for 328 yards and three touchdowns to lead the New Orleans Saints to a 34-14 win over the struggling Atlanta Falcons on Monday night.

Marques Colston caught nine passes for 92 yards and two touchdowns and David Patten caught nine passes for 122 yards and a touchdown to help keep the Saints' (6-7) remote playoff hopes alive.

"It was a good team effort and a good win," Saints coach Sean Payton said. "I thought we were good and balanced offensively."

Brees picked apart a weak Atlanta secondary all night, completing 28-of-41 passes as New Orleans completed a season sweep of the Falcons.

"When you're 5-7, you look around and see you need to win four to control your own destiny (in the playoff race)," Brees said. "But you can't win four until you win one. It's a matter of us playing with consistency and putting together a second game like this and a third and a fourth."

Aaron Stecker rushed for 100 yards in place of the injured Reggie Bush as the Saints prevented Tampa Bay from clinching the NFC South title.

When the game was selected by ESPN as a Monday night contest when the television schedules were set earlier this year, this was supposed to be a matchup between an upstart Saints team which won the NFC South last season against the Michael Vick-led Falcons (3-10).

But with Vick behind bars on federal dog fighting-related charges and New Orleans struggling with and without Bush, who missed this one and perhaps the rest of the season with a knee injury, the game lost a lot of its appeal.

Brees put on a show and helped keep hope alive in New Orleans. The former Purdue standout drove the Saints almost the entire length of the field to get New Orleans on the board.

Picking apart the Falcons on a six-play, 99 yard drive, Brees connected on passes of 12, 21 and 36 yards before finding Patten down the left sideline for a 25-yard touchdown pass with 3:18 remaining in the first quarter.

"We did a great job today," Brees said. "We're an aggressive offense. That's our mind-set. That's why we're successful."

Chris Redman and the Falcons answered right back, driving 80 yards on their next possession to tie the contest.

The 30-year old Redman, who was out of football the past three seasons, connected with Roddy White on a 33-yard pass down the left sideline for his first touchdown since the 2002 campaign to knot the game at 7-7 with 1:12 remaining in the first.

In his first start of the season, Redman, who played at Louisville under Falcons coach Bobby Petrino, finished 23-for-40 for 298 yards, two TDs and one interception.

Even when the Saints screwed up on the field, it came out roses.

Return specialist Lance Moore made a fair-catch signal on a punt at about the 14-yard line with 7:28 remaining in the second. But New Orleans cornerback Usama Young ran into Moore, and Atlanta downed the ball at the Saints 6.

But Brees bailed out Young, engineering a 13-play, 94-yard drive and connecting with Colston for a 15-yard touchdown strike to give New Orleans a 17-7 lead with 1:06 remaining in the half.

"It was a bad day for us and a hard day to take," Petrino said. "We couldn't stop them on defense. Any time you give up drives of 99 and (94) yards, it's hard to win the game."

The Saints rolled in the second half.

Brees connected with Colston for a 2-yard touchdown pass with 9:13 remaining in the third before safety Roman Harper found the end zone on a 31-yard interception return to give the Saints a 31-7 advantage just 43 seconds later.

"We didn't (have good field position)," Brees admitted. "But we put together a 99-yard drive, another 94-yard drive and an 80-yard drive. We did a great job spreading the ball around."

The touchdowns broke the spirits of the downtrodden Falcons and their fans, who woke up Monday to learn that their disgraced signal-caller Vick would be trading in his football cleats for prison garb for the next 23 months.

Atlanta's players paid tribute to Vick. Cornerback DeAngelo Hall came out onto the field with a poster of the felonious quarterback and stenciled "MV7" in black underneath his eyes, while White flashed a homemade "Free Mike Vick" T-shirt after finding the end zone in the first quarter.

"It's life," said Hall, who played with Vick for both the Falcons and at Virginia Tech. "Mike has been given some bad breaks. He has to take it in stride and keep going. We wanted to let him know that we're still thinking about him."

The Falcons could have used Vick.

The offense charged deep into Saints territory on three occasions, but the drives sputtered on the Saints 34-, 35- and 25-yard lines.

"It's been a snowball effect," linebacker Keith Brooking said of the Falcons' woes this season. "Every nationally televised game we've been on, some news broke out about Mike and we have to play a football game. To say it's easy (to play), it's not easy."

Olindo Mare connected on field goals of 27 and 36 yards for the Saints, who won for just the second time in five games.

Michael Jenkins notched a career-high nine catches for 83 yards and a touchdown for the Falcons, who have lost four straight.