Saints Report # 7 - October 20 2019

The Saints traveled to Chicago, and the pundit consensus was that the Bears were going to do to the Saints what they had done to Leonardo DeCaprio.

Afterall,
Drew Bress was still out
Alvin Kamara was not going to play due to injury
Tight End Jared Cook was not going to play due to injury.
Slot coverman PJ Williams is taking a banned substance sabbatical.
Trey Hendrickson is still out.
The Bears were coming off their bye week.
The Bears were getting back Mitch Trubinski, their first round quarterback. 
All signs pointed to a low-scoring, competitive game. 

It wasn’t.  The Saints dominated 36-25, moving to an improbable 6-1 record.
It's becoming obvious, for all to see.

The Saints are built like a Brick. House.  Mighty-mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out.

Consider this:

The Saints blocked a punt that resulted in a safety, and could’ve easily been a touchdown.
The Saints got a piece of a second punt.
The Saints had a touchdown called back on a fumble recovery return that looked like a premature whistle. (They still capitalized on the turnover for their first td.)
The Saints had a punt return touchdown called back due to a holding call
The Saints kicker, Wil Lutz, missed two field goals.

But, Latavius Murray rushed for 119 yards, to control the clock, and Michael Thomas contined his record pace with 9 catches for 131 yards.  
Thomas now has 62 catches in 6 games, which is a pace around 160 catches for the year.  The NFL record is 143.
Ryan Ramczyk neutralized all-world Defensive End Khalil Mack.  I had a discussion with a friend this week where I made the case that Michael Thomas may already be second only to Brees as the greatest Saint of all-time, and he suggested maybe Ramczyk is.  
CJ Gardner Johnson filled in for Williams, and held up well.

The Bears only good play in the first 40 minutes was running back a kickoff for a touchdown.  They drove for a field goal to take a temporary lead of 10-9, then went into hibernation.  The Saints took the lead back at 12-10 to end the half.  They scored on their first possession of the second half, then continued to pound the Bears with their ground game.  When the Bears got the ball with 12:45 left in the 4^th quarter the Saints had a yardage domination of 364 to 85. 

The Saints led 36 – 10 with 4 and a half minutes left.  This may have been the Saints most dominant performance of the year.  To pound a physical team into submission like this was as exciting as any game I’ve seen recently.  .

Unfortunately, the Saints gave up a couple of garbage touchdowns as the 4^th quarter wound down, even messing up an onside kick to contribute to the Bears scoring enough to fool one who hadn’t watched this game. 

Fortunately, like in Seattle they had built up a big enough lead.
Make no mistake, the Saints are well put together.
Everybody knows.