Drew Brees Made Statement by Racking Up Passing Yardage in Return From Injury Against Cardinals

Football fans across the country were left puzzled when the New Orleans Saints announced that Drew Brees would be returning for Week 8's clash against the Arizona Cardinals.

With the Saints' bye week on deck, it was largely presumed that Sean Payton and Co. would just continue rolling withTeddy Bridgewater, who was 5-0 as the starting quarterback while Brees recovered from thumb surgery.

Well, Brees swiftly responded by serving up a fresh dish of crow to those cynics as he utterly torched the Cardinals secondary on Sunday as New Orleans improved to 7-1 on the year.

In his first game since suffering a torn ligament in his throwing thumb in Week 2 versus the Rams, the 12-time Pro-Bowler completed 34 of his 43 pass attempts , which adds up to a 79% completion percentage, for a whopping 373 yards and three touchdowns.

That extraordinary stat line just serves as further proof that nobody should EVER, no matter the circumstance, profess a shred of doubt in Brees. The odds weren't necessarily stacked against him today, but the doubters who claimed he was rushing his return should crawl back under the holes from which they came.

Do you really think that the Saints needed to throw the ball 43 times in their 31-9 over Arizona?

Of course not. But, Payton (and probably Brees himself) wanted to send a bold statement to the rest of the NFL that the Saints are, in fact, a machine with the ageless veteran under center.

We'll go out on a limb and say they did just that.