Watch Drew Brees become 5th player to throw 400th career TD

The good news is that, barring a setback, Brees will only get healthier and stronger.

However, Saints quarterback Drew Brees had the flawless antidote to Hocker’s curse. “I’m not anxious about how many times I’m touching it. During the game, I’m just keeping my legs loose”. “He’s got another plan, ‘” Brees said.

It’s clear Drew Brees is still dealing with a shoulder that’s not 100% (he said after the game it felt “good enough”), relegating him to mostly underneath throws. Avoiding deep passes until the last one, Brees completed 33 of 41 passes for 359 yards and two touchdowns and became the quickest quarterback to reach 400 career touchdowns, doing it in his 206th game. He finished 16-for-26 for 246 yards with one touchdown pass and no interceptions, but he lost his 10th consecutive start.

Then Spiller saw the Cowboys line up in man-to-man coverage on the second play of overtime. Spiller turned into an 80-yard game-winner in overtime, but Brees appeared to get stronger as the game went along. In the National Football League, the first team to score a TD gets the win, so the Cowboys never even got a chance to have the ball in the extra session.

Running back C.J. Spiller came to New Orleans as a free agent this past offseason figuring that his speed and versatility would make him an ideal fit for coach Sean Payton’s offense. “The execution was how you draw it up, but the end result didn’t go in our favor”. Maybe this could be a process with the offensive line, and they are still learning how to build chemistry. New Orleans had six flags for 44 yards, which helped Dallas a lot.

The Saints then moved from their 20 to the Dallas 11, which set up another Hocker field goal to re-tie the game at 13. “You’re just going to make a call and it’s going to work every time….” Dallas struggled to run the ball, gaining only 115 yards on 28 carries; 45 of them coming on a single run on the first possesion. As a blocker, however, the Cowboys needed more from Witten in the running game. It reverberated like the place it used to be, where opponents were smothered by the “Who Dats’ and one of the NFL’s best offenses of this generation”. This is the type of pressure I have been talking about all season that the defense needs to create. “Just letting them slip through the cracks”. But now? I do not think so.

The promise of defensive end Greg Hardy and linebacker Rolando McClain returning to the active roster this week doesn’t provide much solace to this scarred bunch.

“It was a big-time throw from Brandon to T. Will for the touchdown”, said Cowboys coach Jason Garrett.

Payton said he was pleased with the young players’ progress. They stopped the Saints just out of field goal range, but were flagged for too many men on the field, putting the Saints in field goal range and allowing them to tie the game at 10 apiece.

Kikaha continued his impressive showing last night against Dallas when he accumulated a team-high eight tackles against the Cowboys, and together he and fellow LB Stephone Anthony combined for 15 total tackles.

New Orleans (1-3) snapped its three-game losing streak, while Dallas (2-2) fell for the second week in a row. In the next three weeks alone, they face the Philadelphia Eagles, Falcons and Indianapolis Colts.

Hocker’s miss at the end of regulation blunted a furious 68-yard drive by the Saints inside the final two minutes.