In Week 2, the New England Patriots travel to New Orleans, Louisiana, to take on the New Orleans Saints. This game has all the makings of a shootout. It also features two future Hall Of Fame quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Drew Brees, with both of them hoping to get their first win of the season. Kickoff inside the Mercedes Benz Superdome is at 1 P.M. ET.
The New England Patriots have had 10 days to stew over their pathetic performance versus the Chiefs in the opening game of the season. With the whole nation watching the game, the Patriots looked outmatched against an aggressive Kansas City team.
For the Saints, they’re coming off a Monday night football loss to the Vikings, where the offense was dominated all game long by Minnesota’s defense. What was billed as AP’s revenge game, turned out to be nothing more than AP’s whimper and a Saints debacle.
The spread opened with the Patriots favored by 4.5 points. It has since gone up to 6 points. The Over/Under opened at 53.5 points and has gone up to 56.5 total points. It currently sits as the highest Over/Under for Week 2 of the NFL.
Any Patriots spread under a touchdown, and I will take it. You have to think that New England will be better prepared for Week 2 than their opening week fiasco. Additionally, you have to like an angry Tom Brady to go off on the Saints. Brady, who had a disappointing performance against KC, will look to rebound this week and should do so against a bad Saints defense that gave up 346 passing yards to Sam Bradford and the Vikings.
In total, the Saints gave up 470 yards to the Vikings offense, which was one of the worst offenses in the league last year. The Patriots were only able to put up 371 total yards against the Chiefs in Week 1, so they’re salivating over this matchup against a porous New Orleans defense.
With all of that being said, we must note how bad the Patriots defense was against KC. It was an uncharacteristic performance where New England gave up 537 total yards and allowed Alex Smith to look like the best quarterback in the league with a stat line of 28-for-35, 368 yards passing and 4 TD’s.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Patriots also gave up 185 yards on the ground, which were mostly to a rookie running back. In fact they made this rookie RB look like AP. Speaking of Adrian Peterson, he’s angry over playing only 9 snaps in the MNF game against his former team the Vikings. You have to think that he’s ready to run over a bad looking Patriots front 7.
For Drew Brees, I’m sure he’s hoping to duplicate what Alex Smith did. Unfortunately, that probably won’t happen as the Saints don’t have as good of an o-line as the Chiefs do. However, New Orleans does have a puncher’s chance in this game since the Patriots appear to have no pass rush and have taken a step back on the defensive line.
New England is 8-1 ATS in their last 9 games, 17-8 ATS in their last 25 games played on turf, and 5-1 ATS in their last 6 games played during September. Conversely, the Saints are 2-5 ATS in the same month.
I expect Tom Brady to be on fire in this game. Forget Mike Gillislee getting three touchdowns this week. Brady is going to get at least 3 td’s and up near 400 yards this game. The Saints will put up a respectable amount of points, but Brady and Belichick won’t look like fools two weeks in a row. I’m looking for a 38-28 final score where the Saints get garbage time points to make the game appear closer and to make fantasy owners happy.