Does anybody else think that Drew Brees has lost some zip on his deep ball?

It seems to be affecting the way defenses play the Saints as well. Looks as though the Saints do better when they play ball control. Good defense, run the ball, three step drop passing. Never thought I'd have to say that with Sean Payton and Drew Brees.

What I've noticed isn't that he can't push the ball downfield, it's that his accuracy on deep balls has fallen apart. That's usually the first thing that goes when you lose arm strength. Accuracy on deep balls. Not necessarily throwing it deep. When you don't have the arm strength anymore you don't have control because you're pushing your arm past its limits. Just flinging it.

There were two or three throws in last night's game where he not only missed the deep receiver by a good five yards but I remember one specifically to Ginn where he missed so bad it ended up on the wrong side of the receiver. And he wasn't under any pressure and he stepped up into the pocket.

Obviously a 75% Drew Brees is still better than 98% of the other quarterbacks in the NFL but it looks like both Drew and Sean are having trouble coming to grips with this realization. The Atlanta game was a terribly called the game. They barely ran the ball, didn't use any Wildcat packages or anything with taysom Hill and they didn't use a lot of the short passing that they typically use to set up the deep ball. Most of the passing routes were 15 yards plus and I didn't notice a whole lot of check-down routes for the tight end or running back. It looked like they were trying to call a circa 2011 offense.