New Orleans Saints: Matt Hasselbeck Leads a Different Team Second Time Around

The Seattle Seahawks captured the NFC West title with a below average 7-9 record last year. Even though the New Orleans Saints had an 11-5 record in an extremely competitive NFC South division, they had to travel to Qwest field for Wild Card weekend.

The Black and Gold were heavy favorites going into that game; sadly, though, they lost 41-36 to the only team in NFL history to make the playoffs with a losing record. That loss shocked everyone, including Pete Carroll and the entire Seahawk fan base.

It is a new year, and Matt Hasselbeck—the quarterback that engineered that victory for the Seahawks—now plays for a different team, the Tennessee Titans.

Beating the Hasselbeck-led Titans will not erase that atrocious loss from a year ago, but the Saints want revenge of some sort and this is as close as Drew Brees and Co. will get.

The 9-3 Saints take their high-octane offense on the road against the 7-5 Titans this Sunday, and besides achieving a 10th win, which would mark the fourth double-digit win season in the Brees-Payton era, they want vengeance.

The defense comes into the game with a bend-but-don’t-break mentality that has served relatively well thus far. Despite giving up over 400 passing yards to both Eli Manning and Matthew Stafford in back-to-back weeks, the defensive unity has only surrendered 20.5 points per game. It sounds like a big number, but with Brees playing under center, that number works well.

The Black and Gold’s defense brings a middle-of-the-road rush D and a shaky secondary to Nashville—ranked 16th and 30th respectively. On the bright side, Jonathan Vilma is back in the lineup, which should lead to an improvement in those stats.

The Saints' offense is rolling right now, and it has the top passing attack in the league with an average of 325.8 yards per game through the air. If that was not enough, the trio of Pierre Thomas, Darren Sproles and Mark Ingram make up the eighth-best ground game in the NFL. They are averaging 123 yards rushing yards in every contest.

Interestingly enough, the Saints' leading rusher from last year, Chris Ivory, has played sparingly the entire season. Even without him, the black and gold are the only team in the league with three RBs over 400 yards.

If the receivers—paced by Jimmy graham’s 1,000-yard season—continue their great play, I do not see how the Saints could lose this game. Chris Johnson might gash the defense for some long runs, but, in the end, New Orleans should easily prevail in this matchup.

Hopefully when the 4:15 p.m. games kick off, the Saints will be 10-3 with a strangle hold on the NFC South crown; it would be their third division title in six years.