During every single season that he has coached the New Orleans Saints, Sean Payton has had Drew Brees as his starting quarterback.
Brees, who went 142-86 as a starter during the regular season for the Saints, announced his retirement during the offseason which meant Payton, for the first time since 2006, has to find himself a new starter. Apparently, he has.
On Friday morning, Adam Schefter reported that Jameis Winston has been named the Saints’ starting quarterback and will make his first start for New Orleans on opening day versus the Green Bay Packers. Winston, who was the third-string quarterback for New Orleans last year, will be backed up by Taysom Hill, who served as the primary backup to Brees last season and went 3-1 when he was forced into the lineup as a starter due to injury.
Both Winston and Hill were set to hit free agency following last season and both were re-signed by Payton to return to New Orleans to compete, along with Trevor Siemian, so serve as the successor to Brees under center for the Saints.
Now, after Winston’s strong performance in the Saints’ Week Two preseason game against the Jaguars in front of a national audience on Monday Night Football, that competition is over and it is Winston who has come out on top.
Drafted No. 1 overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2015, the 27-year-old went 28-42 over five seasons as a starter before being replaced by Tom Brady and settling for a one-year, $1.1 million contract to back up Brees last season.
Finishing his 2019 season with 33 touchdowns, 30 interceptions and a league-leading 5,109 passing yards, Winston became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for at least 30 touchdowns and 30 interceptions in the same season as well as the first QB during the Super Bowl era to lead the league in passing and then change teams.
As those numbers illustrate, Winston is incredibly talented and incredibly risky and is far from a sure bet to be counted on to do anything consistently except throw the football around the field with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the day. In Winston, who had 73 interceptions over his last four seasons as a starter in Tampa, Payton turns to one of the turnover-prone quarterbacks in the NFL after relying on one of the most risk-averse quarterbacks in the league in Brees, who had 23 picks over his last four seasons as a starter for the Saints. (A difference of 50 INTs!)
Rolling with Winston, which will allow Hill to shift back to the valuable gadget/do-everything role he played as a dual-threat behind — or alongside — Brees, is a clear sign that Payton believes the offense he runs is uniform enough to help remove the recklessness from the seventh-year quarterback’s game and take advantage of the ex-Buc’s big arm. Restricted by Brees’s diminished arm strength over the past few seasons, the Saints will likely have Winston take some deep shots and stretch the field. But, as his last year in Tampa showed, that strategy is very, very risky.
“The Saints need Winston to eschew his sometimes happy feet in the pocket and take the check down when warranted,” per Around the NFL writer Kevin Patra. “Better footwork could also help him avoid some of the low throws that he displayed this preseason, particularly on long sideline tosses. One thing should be certain: Deep shots are back in the Saints offense.”
Whether those deep shots will end up as TDs or INTs is another matter entirely. Clearly, Payton is betting his schemes and coaching will lead to the former. However, if Winston is who he has been thus far, they’ll be plenty of the latter. Replacing Brees was always going to be a crapshoot for Payton, but betting on Winston is quite a gamble.
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