Heading into Monday night’s matchup with the Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees needed 305 passing yards to break Dan Marino’s single season passing record of 5,084 yards set back in 1984. Brees threw for 307 yards and now stands alone – for now, as Tom Brady is sniffing his tail – as the greatest single-season passer of all-time. But the difference between 1984 and 2011 is that now we love to take a huge dump all over a guy’s big moment.
Doing most of the dumping after the Saints’ 45-16 drubbing of the Falcons were the Falcons defensive players, who claim that Brees did the birds dirty by running up the score to get his record. You know, on Monday Night Football, in the Superdome, against the Saints’ bitter rivals, and on the biggest stage of their regular season. What a dick, right? That’s the way the sports media sees it, too, starting with CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco, who thinks Brees’ record will forever be tainted.
The way I see it, what should have been a truly special moment, something that should have happened in the context of the game, and made it tainted with questions.
It won’t overshadow what truly is a special record for one of the greatest passers of this generation, even ever, but it does take some of the gloss off of it.
At first I thought this was just the typical CBS Sports blogger trying to embrace the Skip Bayless contrarian role like Gregg Doyel has almost seemingly mastered, but then I searched a little more and discovered that the feeling is shared by others. Dump away, critics.
