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The New Orleans Saints were in rough shape early in the 2019 season. Drew Brees, the starting quarterback and face of the franchise, was going to miss a month after injuring his throwing hand. Teddy Bridgewater turned in an ugly performance after getting rushed into a road game against Aaron Donald and the Los Angeles Rams defense. There was reason to suspect the season was going to be a disaster.
Instead, Bridgewater did all that was asked of him, and won all five of his starts during Brees’ absence. Saints coach Sean Payton was a believer in Bridgewater all along, but he was still impressed with how the backup and the team around him responded to life without Brees.
“It’s a whole different type of year and I just think he was part of that,” Payton said during his Thursday media availability, “and I think that was kind of a pivotal point for our team to figure out, ‘Hey, how can we handle this adversity?’ And not one person was going to just become Drew Brees, but everyone had to pick up the specifics and we had to find a way to win each one of those weeks.”
Bridgewater performed like a starting quarterback should in the NFL, and by the time Payton took the training wheels off, Bridgewater was downright dominating. Including his first appearance against the Rams, Bridgewater’s first three games saw him complete 59 of 87 passes (67.8%) to gain 535 yards, scoring just two touchdowns against one interception. He averaged just 6.1 yards per pass attempt.
However, Bridgewater rose to a higher level in the following three weeks. He went 73-of-108 for a similar completion percentage (67.6%), but gained 835 yards through the air. He scored seven touchdowns and threw just one interception, and his yards per pass attempt rate climbed to 7.7 And Payton took notice.
Payton continued, “I think directly towards Teddy, he was prepared, ready for the opportunity. It has been a while and yet what I mean for him, it’s him getting back on the horse here in the regular season. And all of a sudden winning, getting better, winning again, winning again and each week his confidence (increased), I just think it was an important part of what became a 13-win season and the importance of having a number-two (quarterback) that can do that.”
The future is murky for Bridgewater. He and Brees are both going to be unrestricted free agents in the spring, and the success lesser quarterbacks have had in free agency suggests he could be due for a huge payday. If Nick Foles can parlay a hot three-game playoffs run into $88 million with the Jacksonville Jaguars, why can’t Bridgewater spin his five-game winning streak into his own big-money contract?
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