One thing Sheldon Rankins has figured out about his teammates during his three-plus years with the New Orleans Saints, a trend he has picked up on as his team has won by shootout or by blowout, by defensive battle or by sloppy, turnover-filled mess.

More often than not, the common denominator lately has been the check in the win column. That is the only takeaway that matters. And that’s why Rankins did not lose his cool a couple weeks ago when the Saints appeared to be staring down their team’s championship mortality when Drew Brees injured his right thumb.

“Everybody else, from the outside looking in, might have looked at it as adversity,” Rankins said. “When you lose a walking Hall-of-Famer, the expectation is for a team to be scrambling trying to figure out what they’re going to do next.

“One thing this group of guys has found a way to do throughout the time we’ve been here is to find a way to win games. No matter if it’s high-scoring, low-scoring, a defensive struggle, offensive shootout — no matter what it is, we find a way to win. That’s why we never bat an eye.”

Sunday’s 31-24 win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was just the latest example of what Rankins said. For the third consecutive week, the Saints lined up without their future Hall of Fame quarterback, and for the third consecutive week they physically whupped the team across from them.

Five weeks into the season, three weeks of going into games knowing Brees would not be on the field, and the Saints are 4-1 with a full game lead on the rest of the NFC South. And the defense has played a huge hand in bringing that last sentence to life.

The defense was dominant Sunday, wringing the life out of the Tampa offense with equal parts pressure on the front and back end.

The Saints sacked Jameis Winston six times, embarrassing Buccaneers offensive linemen in the process a few times. Go find a highlight of Marcus Davenport’s sack in the fourth quarter, when he burst off the line at the snap and bowled over Demar Dotson, an 11-year veteran offensive tackle. It was pure power, a beautifully brutal bull rush that Dotson had no chance of stopping.

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“A freak of nature,” said Cam Jordan of Davenport. “I keep saying that since we drafted him. A freak of nature. And he’s going to continue growing. That’s all you have to do, continue progressing. You saw it today, he’s starting to get lethal off the edge.”

Jordan had a sack too, and so did Rankins in his second game back from a torn Achilles he suffered this January — an experience Rankins called “absolutely amazing.” Undrafted rookie Carl Granderson and offseason free agent acquisition Malcom Brown also recorded sacks, meaning all six came from the defensive line.

Winston was constantly under pressure. Several of the Saints sacks were clean up jobs after Winston managed to wriggle out of the first defender’s grasp. Several other occasions featured him running for his life and throwing the ball away before the Saints could bring him down.

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“It was an avalanche in the fourth quarter,” Jordan said of the pass rush generated by the Saints defensive line.

When Winston did have time to consider his options, he did not like what he saw. The Saints secondary turned in one of their best performances of the year against a talented Buccaneers wide receiver corps.

Talented third-year wideout Chris Godwin got his, catching seven balls for 125 yards and two touchdowns. But nobody else found any breathing room against the Saints secondary. The next leading receiver after Godwin was running back Dare Ogunbowale, who caught two passes for 27 yards.

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Notably, it was not Mike Evans. With Marshon Lattimore traveling with Evans everywhere he went, the Bucs’ Pro Bowl receiver did not catch one of the three passes sent his way.

A reporter approached Lattimore after the game and started asking a question: Three years in a row, you guys are used to …

Lattimore cut the question off before it could be completed. “Winning,” he said.

“That’s the standard set here,” Lattimore said. “… We got to win. We can’t go back to 7 and 9. We can’t go back to that, we’ve got to win, be on top of our division, get to the playoffs. We need the Super Bowl.”

Five games in, the Saints are on that path, even without a player of Brees’ caliber. Three games without Brees, one impressive road win where all three phases contributed in a meaningful way, one emotional home win in a defensive struggle on prime time, and finally Sunday's comfortable home win against a division opponent.

You can’t replace Brees, Jordan said, but you also can’t replace the culture that’s taken root around him.

“You have to rise to the occasion,” Jordan said. “I said it at the beginning of the season: Nobody wants to win more than me, nobody wants to win more than our defense and nobody wants to win more than our team — and you can feel it, and it’s not just words. These are things you display every game.”