Glauber: Payton wants champ Saints to keep grinding

FOXBOROUGH, Mass.

Drew Brees barks signals as he surveys the defense and takes the snap. He fades back in the pocket under a heavy rush and finds tight end Jeremy Shockey streaking left to right across the middle past a defender. Brees threads the pass perfectly for a 20-yard gain.

Sign of more good things to come for the defending Super Bowl champions? We'll see. February in Dallas is a long way from the sweltering heat and humidity of yesterday's practice against the Patriots.

For now, the Saints continue to follow coach Sean Payton's "one day at a time" mantra and not think about the big picture.

"You'd be naive to think you can step on the field and teams are just going to roll over," said Super Bowl MVP Brees. "Everybody's gunning for you because you've got a bull's-eye on your chest."

So Brees heeds Payton's commands: "Constantly focus on details and fundamentals and concentrate on the things that are going to get you a little better every day. Don't look too far ahead. "

Brees admits to relying on these "cheesy cliches," because he and the Saints believe that's the only way they'll have a chance to repeat. The last team to pull that off is the one the Saints are practicing with this week.

The Saints and Patriots are conducting three sessions before Thursday night's preseason opener at Gillette Stadium. Rest assured the Saints will find out all they can about how the Patriots won back to back in 2003 and 2004.

During a break Tuesday, Payton went over to quarterback Tom Brady and asked about it.

"I said, 'You guys won in 2001, didn't win in '02, and won in '03 and '04.' My question was, 'What was the difference between '02 and '04?' " Payton said. "Tom said you gain an appreciation for the challenge. Just because you have a lot of your team back, it really means nothing. It's a new year."

Payton looks to the Patriots as the standard by which all teams are now measured. There is no coach he respects more than Bill Belichick, with the possible exception of Bill Parcells. Payton worked with Parcells in Dallas. Belichick was Parcells' defensive coordinator with the Giants, Patriots and Jets.

"When we got hired in 2006, we looked closely at New England," Payton said. "They were the model, and we're not afraid to talk about that. This is an organization that gets it. They put team first. It's unselfish. My grandmother used to say, 'Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.' Well, he's done such a good job and we've tried to create the same environment in New Orleans that they've done here."

That approach helped the Saints rout the Patriots at the Superdome on a Monday night last December. Payton even took a page out of Belichick's motivational book to get his team ready.

The night before the game, Payton showed his team a video in which he dressed up like Belichick and delivered a mock speech to the Patriots about what they should expect from the Saints. He even had his faux Belichick criticize Payton because his team committed too many turnovers. He got on Brees for being too short and having too many passes batted down at the line of scrimmage.

The players were mesmerized because Payton was so believable as Belichick. The next night, the Saints crushed the Patriots, 38-17, to improve to 11-0. Two months later, New Orleans won the Super Bowl for the first time.

Brees recalls the meeting vividly. "He sat there and said about me, 'This short quarterback, get your hands up, bat down every ball and he can't see over the line of scrimmage.' It was funny. Everybody laughed. I laughed, too, but I knew it was important to have a high release point and throw through the lanes and make sure I didn't get any passes batted down."

Payton will surely dream up more motivational schemes this season, and perhaps he'll do another Belichick imitation. Anything to reach a team dreaming of a rare Super Bowl repeat.