These are not the Saints of the Drew Brees era, of the Sean Payton era, or even the first-month-of-this-season era. This is a Saints team that is getting scarier by the minute — a team that can win in ways that are hard to recognize.
Sunday’s win in Buffalo should scare the whole league, the NFC in particular. And yes, that includes the 8-1 Eagles. Their day off probably was a little less relaxing than it should have been, after seeing the most impressive two-loss team in the conference creep a little closer.
MORE: Winners, losers of 2017 NFL swap meet
In crushing the Bills’ souls, 47-10, the Saints ran them off their own field, and beat them down on defense. If they’re using Brees to just move the chains in between grounding and pounding, and if they’re mauling opposing offenses and making it not look like a fluke, then the Eagles can’t be guaranteed anything, even front-runner status.
The game in Buffalo was supposed to have been a "statement" game — consider it delivered. A lot of doubts about the Saints’ recent run were at least pushed aside, if not eliminated.
The 7-2 Saints have won seven in a row (same as the Eagles, the longest current run in the NFL), and have managed to look even more complete than the team they’re chasing … and that team dropped 51 on the Broncos in their last game.
On Sunday, on the road against a playoff contender (albeit one that had laid an egg in its last game against the Jets), the Saints ran the ball nearly 50 times and crept close to double the number of Brees pass attempts. The touchdown tally: rushing, six; passing, zero. The rushing-yard total of 298 was the third-most in team history, and the two ahead of them were in 1981 and 1976.
Wrap your head around that, and around this: Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara were the first pair of Saints backs to each rush for more than 100 yards since 2006 … and the last time Brees threw fewer than his 25 passes against the Bills was in 2009.
The third-quarter drive that padded the lead to 37-3 lasted 6 minutes, 33 seconds and went 94 yards in 10 plays … all on the ground. Every one. Not one Brees pass. He literally ran more than he threw on that possession — the last 7 yards on a scramble for the touchdown. There honestly may never have been a drive resembling that in his 12 years in New Orleans.
It’s hard to remember the time when the Saints seemed to have no clue of how to get all their running backs in the mix, or whether they should, or whether they were better off out in pass patterns or protection than actually running. That was back when Adrian Peterson was around, scowling and getting two or three touches a game.
That’s also when the Saints' defense couldn’t stop anybody, when they gave up 1,025 combined yards to the Vikings and Patriots during their 0-2 start. The last two weeks, against the Buccaneers and Bills, they gave up 200 and 198, respectively, and they’ve given up just two touchdowns, last week’s as late and meaningless as this week’s.
The two weeks before that — against Brett Hundley and the Packers, then Mitchell Trubisky and the Bears — the Saints looked sketchy on both sides of the ball. They got over that fast.
MORE: Week 10 NFL Scoreboard
As Brees said after the Bills bludgeoning, they found their "rhythm." The offensive line, shuffled and rearranged all season long, was unstoppable Sunday. "It all starts up front," Brees noted.
It still might be the Eagles’ conference to lose. But don’t be surprised if these barely recognizable Saints take it from them.
