The Bell Tolls: NFL's best QB ... could be the Saints' Drew Brees

Enlarge US Presswire photo Drew Brees led the Saints to their first Super Bowl this season. FORT LAUDERDALE — T-minus one day before Super Bowl XLIV.By Jarrett Bell, USA TODAY As usual, this is the sweet spot for coveringSuper Bowl week. The hype has been pretty much been reported, and the deadline pressure of the big game can wait. Hated to miss the GQ party in Miami Beachon Thursday night, but there are a few more events looming that will allow this trusty correspondent to make amends. WHY THE COLTS WILL WIN: Look to Peyton Manning WHY THE SAINTS WILL WIN: It's the defense that will rise But first, a few items still stirring in my notebook: • Drew Brees vs. Peyton Manning: The Colts star is widely considered the best quarterback in the NFL, and it's tough to argue. In his 12th season, he's passed for more than 50,000 yards and ranks among the top five all-time in that category, as well as for career TD passes and W's. If he wins a second Super Bowl, some are ready to crown P-Money as the greatest passer ever. Hmmm. Who's had better numbers than Manning the past four years? Brees, who has an NFL-best 18,298 yards and 30 300-yard games since collaborating with Saints coach Sean Payton. Both have thrown for 122 TDs during that span. Manning says the aspect of Brees' game that he appreciates the most is his aggressiveness. Brees, who set an NFL record this season with a 70.6% completion rate, isn't afraid to fire passes into tight windows. Even so, someone asked Brees, 6-0, 209, if he feels he gets slighted in the best-quarterback conversation because of his lack of height. Manning is 6-5. "It's been a survival mechanism," Brees says of his lack of height. "When you don't have one thing, you have to utilize other things that are strengths." And for Brees, that includes vision and deft movement in the pocket. • Win one for the Grandpa Mudd: Super Bowl 44 marks the final game for Colts guru Howard Mudd, who is retiring as arguably the NFL's most respected offensive line coach. Not that his unit — which allowed an NFL-low 13 sacks in 2009 — will need any incentive beyond winning a Lombardi Trophy. But they'd sure like to send Mudd into the sunset with another Super Bowl ring, which would likely mean they withstood the rush from a Saints defense that physically abused Hall of Fame-credentialed quarterbacks Kurt Warner and Brett Favreen route to Miami. How does Mudd's pending retirement resonate? "It's sad," said longtime Colts center Jeff Saturday. "Sad and happy, I guess. I'm happy for him and Shirley, his wife, starting his life, post-football. "But he's all I've known as an offensive line coach. He calls guys to play well; he has a standard that he's not going to go below and I have a lot of respect for that. Then off-the-field, we call him Grandpa Howard. He's a totally different guy. On the field, there are times I totally want to punch him in the face, but off the field he's a totally different guy. I've seen him with my kids, literally hoist them on his shoulders, playing like he's a papa. So it's the full person we're going to miss. Coaching wise, you're not going to find one better than he is. The guy can dissect defenses better than anyone I've ever seen. He sees things. So that part will be tough. But it will be off-the-field stuff that I will miss the most." • Remember me? Saints D-coordinator Gregg Williamsgenerated many headlines and undeniable bulletin-board material in declaring on Nashville's WGFX-FM that he wants his unit to knock Manning around (or out) with some "remember me shots." He hardly regrets stirring the pot. "I'm not going to be polite about it," Williams said. "That's what defense is all about." Williams' work in his first season with the Saints is validated by their appearance in the last game of the season. His aggressive, blitz-heavy scheme is at the foundation of a big-play unit that scored an NFL-high eight TDs off defensive returns and ranked third in the league with 26 interceptions. Such impact is rooted in a pivotal decision last offseason. Williams — who said there's no coach in the NFL he has greater respect for than Tennessee's Jeff Fisher— turned down an opportunity to return to the Titans. Why did he choose the Saints? "Drew Brees," Williams says. "I really wanted an opportunity to go to a team with an offense where you could make a few mistakes and still be successful. It's a different mind-set. You can take a few more risks." • The PR factor: With the first real deadline in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players union looming in early March — when the 2010 league year could begin as an "uncapped year" — the rhetoric is heating up. What was most striking from this view in the DMZ? The contrasting tone from each side in their public discourse this week. NFLPA chief DeMaurice Smith, asked during his press conference on Thursday to rank the chances of a lockout in 2011, said, "On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 14." NFL commissioner's Roger Goodell's response during his state-of-the-league presser on Friday: "I couldn't make that prediction. I hope he's wrong. I hope it's not a self-fulfilling prophecy." Goodell seems intent on publicly expressing the theme that the NFL doesn't want a work stoppage, which could turn off fans of the nation's most popular sport. The union contends that the NFL's low-ball initial proposal and behind-the-scenes maneuvering contradicts the public stance. "The idea that ownership wants a stoppage is absolutely false," Goodell said. "You don't make money by shutting down your business." Goodell was asked by USA TODAY's Tom Pedulla if there are lessons to be learned from Major League Baseball's loss of fan support during the mid-90s, when a strike caused the cancellation of the World Series. "There are no benefits to stopping the game," he said. "If it comes to that, we will all fail." One reporter phrased a question during Goodell's press conference by characterizing Smith as "smooth." Indeed, Smith can express himself quite well and the NFLPA's press session was a more polished presentation than previous conferences with Gene Upshaw. But "smooth" sounds like a code word that Obama detractors have used. What's so wrong with a man speaking well enough that he doesn't stumble over his words? And Goodell isn't smooth? Bottom line: In a high-stakes negotiation where the interpretation of facts and data are central to the differences between the sides, Smith and Goodell are both pretty smooth, which says much about why they're in their high-powered positions in the first place.