Not even Joe is his most drunken state would dare to suggest Drew Brees is not an NFL elite quarterback. Shoot, he’s looking at a bust being made for him in Canton.

But Brees is hardly ready to anoint his team as an NFL elite squad, not should he after getting woodshedded by the lowly Lambs last week.

Brees explains the details to James Varney of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

So just what sort of team is the Saints? That answer must come now, as New Orleans faces back-to-back divisional opponents, beginning with Tampa Bay at home Sunday.

“Not right now, we haven’t proven it,” quarterback Drew Brees said. “I believe we have the ability to be, but we haven’t proven it, yet. We’ve got to win games like the one last week. We have to be able to put together good performances consistently and show that we can win in a lot of different ways. That we can win when maybe, hey, we just don’t have our best stuff, for whatever reason. We can win when we’re a little bit banged up. We can win with offense, we can win with defense, we can win with special teams. But no matter what the situation or whatever we encounter, just find a way. And when I look at us over the last three years, I feel like we’ve been very good at that. I can definitely point to games where you can say, ‘Man, we shouldn’t have lost that one, and we did.’ But I can also point to a lot of games where, man, we found a way. As you look at this season, though, and this moment and this opportunity, what kind of team are we going to be this year? Because I feel like we have all the pieces in place. And when we do play well, we play extremely well. We just need that to be on a more consistent basis.”

After walking through the games to date, Brees concluded again that for the team to realize its goal of playing in Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, things must improve.

Joe has great respect for Brees. But Joe’s of the mind that the Bucs should pound LeGarrette Blount until the Saints can prove they can stop the run.

Thus far this season, New Orleans has not done so.