



GREEN BAY, Wis. – The captain of the New Orleans Saints' seemingly sinking ship was the last man out of the visitors' locker room at Lambeau Field last Sunday night, his manner conceding nothing, his head held high.



"Our best is yet to come," Drew Brees insisted as he strode to the team bus outside the stadium, following a 28-27 defeat to the Green Bay Packers that dropped last season's NFC South champions to 0-4. "We're gonna continue to fight and grind, and if we can keep getting better each week and build on this, the wins will start coming."

When you play as masterfully as Brees did in Sunday's setback, a game in which the 12th-year quarterback completed 35 of 54 passes for 446 yards and three touchdowns, it's easy to avoid copping a defeatist attitude.

Indeed, if Brees can perform similarly against his former team, the San Diego Chargers, at the Superdome on Sunday night, the Saints might be able to start a winning streak to save their season.

Even so, a month into a 2012 season marred by third-rate replacement officials and hotly contested kneel-downs, there's no disputing that the Saints are the biggest disappointment to date.

Never mind that New Orleans has a ready-made excuse: The offseason bounty scandal which jolted the franchise and, most significantly, led to the yearlong suspension of coach Sean Payton. As my colleague Jason Cole detailed so adeptly Tuesday, Payton's absence caused a far bigger void than most people saw coming.

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Surely, he is missed as a shrewd offensive mind and innovative play-caller, but the problems run far deeper. The Saints players and other team sources to whom I've spoken recently all cite Payton's tone-setting qualities – and prickly personality in general – as the element the locker room most glaringly lacks.

"Let's face it – Sean's kind of a cocky bastard, and that was the way our team carried itself, too," one veteran player said. "We're missing that swagger, that sense that we're better than you, and we could really use it now. … He had a way of keeping everyone on edge. It makes a big difference."

The Saints have other issues as well. The transition from former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams to replacement Steve Spagnuolo has been an abrupt one, both schematically and in terms of coaching style, and New Orleans has struggled to stop opponents to an almost embarrassing degree. Because the defense has been so deficient, Brees and his fellow offensive players have pressed, believing they have to score touchdowns on virtually every possession to keep pace.

The Saints' offensive line has also fallen off, undoubtedly a byproduct of the strange interim/interim decision that has kept offensive line coach Aaron Kromer – the fill-in coach while interim coach Joe Vitt serves a six-game suspension – from devoting the bulk of his energies to his position group.

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In retrospect, though I was skeptical of the idea at the time, hiring Bill Parcells to serve as Payton's stand-in might have been the best approach. Parcells, like Payton, is a master of keeping his players on edge, in addition to being very smart about strategy and team-building. Instead of a business-as-usual mantra, the Parcells-coached Saints might have been able to foster an us-against-the-world complex that actually resonated, considering that even Payton's most trusted associates – and even Brees – would have truly felt uneasy about the situation.