A few days ago Drew Brees made one of his usual appearances on WWL's Sports Talk with Bobby Hebert to help promote his concert for charity, "The Domino Effect" held this past Saturday at the New Orleans Arena. Not surprisingly, the talk didn't just center around Drew's music benefit. The guys naturally discussed the team, the off-season and what to expect next season.
What was surprising, however, was the bomb that Drew dropped on Who Dat Nation in the midst of this soundbite...
I think that Pierre is our number one back and can do the job and now, you know, I feel like Reggie can be able to step in and do a great job and whoever our number three guys is at this point we don't know...but certainly I think Pierre Thomas is the total package.
Boom!! Rec'd it!
So that's it. We, the fans, have been agonizing for months over who should, could and will be the main back for the Saints in 2009 and we've finally got our answer. No more questioning or speculating. Drew has ended it all with a quick slip of his tongue. Somewhere, Payton is fuming.
Or is he? Is this really that a big of a deal? Should Reggie take offense to this? Did Drew screw up or is he merely stating fact? Is all of this just hogwash? So many questions arise from the simple analysis of these few sentences.
Ironically, Brees actually contradicts the whole concept of a running back hierarchy immediately before his statement about Thomas being the number one back by saying...
As you look around the league I can't think of a team that just has one guy. Just about every team, when you look at the great running teams in the league - the Giants, Carolina last year, the Titans - all these guys have got at least two.
And he's right. It takes more than just one guy to have a succesful running attack so what does it even matter what silly numbers we assign to Thomas and Bush in an effort to make ourselves feel better about the situation. Personally, Drew's statements merely affirm what I have always felt should be the running philosophy of this team - Pierre grinding it out as the regular all-purpose back and Reggie for all the other wonderful things he can do - and I am glad to see the organization may finally agree. In fact, we shouldn't bother questioning the minutiae of who is number one and who is number two. The real question will be whether or not the coaching staff will call those numbers at the proper times.
Make the jump for the actual audio and listen for yourself. Then discuss.