What The Seattle Seahawks Are Saying About The New Orleans Saints

[wysifield-embeddedaudio|eid="445826"|type="embeddedaudio"|view_mode="full"] Take a look at what the Seahawks (4-1-1) are saying about the Saints (2-4) before the two teams meet in Week 8 at New Orleans' Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Head Coach Pete Carroll (On Saints quarterback Drew Brees...) “He is one of the great players to play in this game. I don’t think of guys in that way until they’ve played a really long time. He has sustained the great level of production for, I don’t know how many years he has been there, but for the last eight to ten years, he has been on top with huge numbers and huge consistency and the kind of special performances and ability to pull off finishes and the great red zone numbers, the great third down numbers, year after year after year. Forget about what the makeup of the player is, that means nothing to me, it’s just the kind of stuff that happens when he’s on the football field, is really the great players who have played the game. His numbers bear that out. He still looks great. He has a 68 and a half completion rate now, almost eight yards a play and stuff. He’s just doing great stuff. This is a really big time challenge for anybody who plays these guys. He’s putting the number up every week, it’s the second ranked offense and all the rest. He doesn’t look any different than he has in a long time. He doesn’t look like there’s any diminishing qualities to his play. He’s always been a great touch guy and a great precision, accuracy guy. A great rhythm guy, too. Getting the ball out. They’ve only been sacked nine times. He’s a phenomenal talent. It’s a great challenge for us.” (On the way the Saints spread the ball around...) “They know, [Saints head coach] Sean [Payton] knows what he’s doing. He uses his players. He uses formations, he uses tendencies and situations and all of that. This is the big time throwing game you can see in the NFL, and this is as high powered as you get. We have great respect and we’ve seen it over the years, we know, and here is its again, they’re still on it. They plugged other guys in and they’ve been able to maintain a really high level of production too with other guys, which is really impressive.” (On Drew Brees’ excellent timing...) “It challenges your coverage to be aggressive. If you just lay back, he’ll just tear you up. He’ll hit 75 percent of his passes and he’ll have a clean day. So we have to be very aggressive in coverage that matches with the rush that’s coming, so he doesn’t have the opportunity to get everything out. He’s going to get the ball out quickly anyways, even in one-on-ones and tight coverage, he’ll still get the ball out, but you have a better chance of slowing him down some. The rhythm when he really wants to get fast, there’s almost no rush that can get there, because he’s coming out probably less than two and a half seconds. It’s really close to 1.9s, right in there. When he’s like that, the ball is going to get out. you have to have coverage that’s close and you have to make him pay for that release. The only way to do that is to play good, aggressive coverage. It’s the combination, when you play a great quarterback, it’s the combinations of all aspects. You can’t just cover up, you can’t just rush him, you can’t just blitz him. You have to be able to do all those things and it’s always been that way.”Offensive Coordinator Darrell Bevell (On what challenges the Saints present…) “The first thing, I’ve been there, played the NFC Championship game there and it’s a loud place. That’s something that we’re going to have to manage. The defense gives you a whole bunch of different looks. They play a lot of different personnels. With that and with the crowd noise and all the things that can go on it can make things feel like there’s a lot of chaos. So we have to stay calm, we have to keep our poise, we have to handle the crowd noise and handle the looks from the defense.”Quarterback Russell Wilson (On the strengths of the Saints defense...) “Their defense flies around. They got a lot of players that have played a lot of football, in the sense of this year. You think about all their DBs and their dime package and their nickel package, they got a lot of different people that have come in and out of the game. Their defensive front does a lot of different things as well, Cameron Jordan is a great player as well if you watch him on film. There’s just a lot of guys causing havoc and making plays, and they hustle to the ball really well. They’re an exciting defense to watch in the sense of how hard they play, especially when you turn on the film. They’re trying to overcome, obviously they’re a tough football team. When you think about their quarterback, Drew Brees, a good friend who is a great football player, tons of respect for, he helps the motor run on their whole team.” (On what he has learned from Saints quarterback Drew Brees...) “In terms of football wise, one of my best moments, coolest moments, was when I was on the pro bowl team my rookie year and Drew Brees was on my team too, we were on the same team. I think it was Drew Brees, myself, Eli Manning. It was just a really cool experience. I remember watching Drew and his presence, Drew and his ability to capture the guys and make sure that everybody is on the same page, just his knowledge of the game. He loves studying, his footwork is phenomenal, he’s a great quarterback. He can make all the throws, he’s accurate as can be, he’s tough. He’s a guy I’ve always looked up to, even in college and high school, too, watched him play a ton of football. He’s just a great family person too, I know his family pretty well and just gotten to know them over the years. I have tons of respect for how he plays the game. He’s first class as can be. His work ethic is what makes him so special. I think that just watching him there, that was one of the coolest experiences that I’ve had in my professional career, being around somebody that you really look up to. He’s a Hall of Fame quarterback for a reason. He overcame the odds and that’s what I really respect about him. A lot of people told him that he couldn’t do it and he’s done it through hard work, through dedication and through making great plays and his clutchness. You respect the game, you respect the man that he is.”Defensive End Michael Bennett (On what makes Drew Brees and the Saints passing game so effective…) “I think Drew Brees, he makes the passing game what it is. I think if you put any other quarterback in that system, they wouldn’t be able to do what he does. I think him being able to understand defenses, his hard count, his knowledge of the game is what makes him a great player. I think when you get to a certain age in the league, you have to be able to have knowledge. I think he’s so knowledgeable that he can see what other guys are doing. He’s looking for that rookie to show the blitz, he’s looking for this, for that, he looks for those tendencies and he breaks them. That’s what makes him a great quarterback.” (On what he respects about Drew Brees...) “I think I have to respect Drew Brees. I really respect the money he’s made in the league. Overall I think Drew Brees is just a really good quarterback, he’s a pro’s pro, you look at what he’s done for the last 10 years in this league and it’s just outstanding. He’s passed Dan Marino, he’s done so many great things as a quarterback. I think you look at the way he approaches the game and the way he has guys studying, he motivates his team. I think he’s a true pro, he’s a true champion and it’s a joy playing against guys like that. You love playing against guys that are competitors and he’s just a really great competitor. There’s a lot of people in the NFL that aren’t really great competitors, but he’s one of the best.”Linebacker Bobby Wagner (On if the biggest challenge this week is Drew Brees himself...) “I would say so. Probably the biggest challenge is going to be containing him. He doing a great job kind of spreading the ball around. Once they spread it around, they’ll add some draws and try to get they’re run game in. I felt like the defense has done good when they’ve made them one dimensional not let them succeed on the runs and the pass, try to limit them to one thing. I feel like we definitely have the personnel to do that. That’s definitely our plan to go in and try to limit something. We definitely want to get after them we feel like we can get after them. We have the pass rushers and speed to cover everybody on their team. We’ll be in his face for sure.” (On if the challenge is similar to the one he faced vs Atlanta...) “It’s a little different. I feel like Atlanta uses their fullback a little bit more. I feel like the Saints they kind of use him, [John] Kuhn they’ll put him out by himself. They do a lot of different things with him. I think it’s a little different but at the same time they’ve been very successful at passing the ball. They’ve been very successful kind of spreading everything around. They haven’t played us yet.”Defensive Coordinator Kris Richard (On if the strengths of the Saints’ offense is similar to the strengths of the Seahawks’ defense...) “Yes. It’s the same idea. There’s a reason why they are successful. They understand what they’re good at and they come out in different formations and different personnels and they run a lot of the same concepts, but that’s kind of how they get around. Like, ‘They kind of do all the stuff well’, well no, they give you some window dressings and things like that where it may not look familiar, but it’s certainly going to be what the quarterback does best.” (On what makes Drew Brees and their receiving core so dangerous...) “It’s him, yeah really it’s him. He’s an elite quarterback, he has a really good feel for where he wants the ball to go. He understands defenses really well, he understands where he wants to put the ball and he understands how to coach his players to where he wants the, if he ever gets in trouble which you rarely see because he’s awesome in the pocket. He knows how to maneuver around, he can move people with his eyes and do things of that nature. He places people where he wants them.” RELATED What The Saints Are Saying About The Seahawks

What The Seattle Seahawks Are Saying About The New Orleans Saints

A look at what the Seahawks are saying about the Saints before the two teams meet in Week 8 at New Orleans.