Saints Headed to Miami

Article by Travis Pulver

Rob Schneider would have loved commentating on this game. Then again his trademark,” It’s a fumble! Fumblaya!” would have gotten rather annoying as often as the ball seemed to be on the ground during this game.

The NFC Championship game featured two of the best offense in the game captained by two of the best quarterbacks. On the regular season the New Orleans Saints had the best offense in football while the Minnesota Vikings ranked 5^th. What the Vikings lacked in statistics they made up for in leadership with the intangibles that only a future hall of famer like Brett Favre can bring.

In the end it would be the defenses that would rule the day. The 25^th ranked defense of the Saints would harass Brett Favre all day long constantly knocking the 40 year old quarterback down and nearly out of the game, and causing the Vikings to put the ball on the ground six times throughout the course of the game with the Saints recovering three to go with two interceptions.

New Orleans would end up only turning a season high five turnovers into seven points; perhaps what was more important was that they kept Favre and the Vikings from scoring.

Minnesota’s top ranked defense did well in slowing down the high powered Saints for much of the game. Drew Brees averaged 272 yards on the season, but was held to under 200 (197).He did, however, throw three touchdown passes. New Orleans was held well below their season average of close to 400 yards a game with 257; the Vikings would gain 475.

Both teams came out firing in the first quarter, each wasting no time in engineering touchdown drives. Favre would take a 14-7 lead into the second quarter only to see Drew Brees throw a 9 yard touchdown to Devery Henderson to tie the game. Minnesota would have an opportunity to take a lead into halftime after recovering a muffed kick by Reggie Bush only to see Favre fumble the ball back to the Saints.

Favre would move the Vikings well in the second half, but turnovers kept them from scoring more than 14 points. Of their six second half drives, the Vikings were either scoring or turning the ball over.

Four times in the second half the Minnesota defense would hold the Saints to three and out drives. The two touchdown drives that New Orleans did have were only 37 yards and 7 yards. Minnesota had a chance to attempt a game winning field goal towards the end of regulation only to have an injured Brett Favre throw his second interception of the day, effectively sending the game into overtime.

The most important play of the game next to the winning kick came as the overtime period opened. After losing the coin toss, the Vikings had to kick off. Pierre Thomas ended up returning the kick 40 yards to the New Orleans 39, giving the Saints excellent field position. Brees would go on to engineer a ten play, 39 yard drive, the best one for the Saints since early in the second quarter, to give second year kicker Garrett Hartley the chance to win from 40 yards out

This will be the first time since 1990 that both conference #1 seeds made it to the Super Bowl.

Tags: Brett Favre, Drew Brees, minnesota, Minnestoa Vikings, New Orleans, New Orleans Saints, NFC Championship Game, Saints, Super Bowl, vikings