Quote:
Originally Posted by Sainters7
One area of the game where I think the Saints dominated and hasn't gotten enough attention is on special teams. Morestead forced explosive guys like Percy Harvin into taking a knee in the endzone on seemingly every kick-off. The Saints were also tackling very well on punts, something I was very impressed with considering arguably our best ST player in Malcolm Jenkins was out. Meanwhile, the Saints were getting big returns from both Courtney Roby and Pierre Thomas all game, setting up great field position, including on what ended up being the game-winning drive.
For the Saints fans on here, I think we all remember how in the '06 NFC Championship, Chicago punter Brad Maynard basically turned the game around for the Bears in the 2nd half with constant coffin corner kicks, I've never seen a punter play so well. In fact I think where the Saints finally fell apart was on that Brees safety, which started when Maynard forced the Saints to start their drive on their own 2.
As we all know, games can easily be won and lost on ST play. The Saints were clearly the better team in this area, so its not surprising they won the game.
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That return by Thomas set up the whole overtime for the Saints. Pretty clutch play for a guy who was more or less back there because the other guy Roby had been injured earlier.
Anytime you have a team win a game where the other team had more yards on offence like what happened in the NFC Championship game, if you go back and add in return yardage from kickoffs, punts, interceptions, and fumble returns chances are the yardage total will swing to the team who won. In a year where a lot of veteran kickers botched makeable kicks at key times, Hartley hit that one right on the money.