In 2008, wide receiver Lance Moore was Drew Brees "Go To Guy." He caught 79 passes for 928 yards with 10 touchdown receptions. Injuries to Marques Colston, Jeremy Shockey and Reggie Bush led to increased opportunities for Moore, and he took advantage of them in a big way.
But as he was preparing to build on his impressive showing of last year, the injury bug bit Moore. The 4 year veteran injured his left shoulder lifting weights. It required surgery some 3-plus months ago.
At the Saints OTAs Moore sounded an optimistic note on his health. "The shoulder's doing well," he said.
During the off-season team practices, Moore was limited to walk-throughs. With training camp set to start later this month, Saints head coach Sean Payton expects to take a conservative approach to getting Moore back into action.
"The key is just to make sure that he's healthy enough so that he doesn't re-injure the shoulder. He is someone who's very intelligent, very smart. You don't like it when players are missing reps, but in his case he has a good grasp as to what we're doing," Payton said. "I think he's going to be close to ready when we start. We'll probably put him on a little bit of a limited basis in regards to how much right from the get-go but I think he'll be very close."
As for his goals for the upcoming campaign, Moore wants to stay on the field and not pay attention to stats.
"Remain healthy! That's my main focus right now is to get healthy and stay healthy and just do whatever it takes to win games, whether that's catching balls and scoring touchdowns or blocking for my teammates or whatever I have to do," Moore said. "Our goal this year is to win a championship and I'll take a backseat to all that."
Listen to Moore:
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During his 4 year NFL career, Moore's duties have included returning punts. He had 32 returns with an 8.4 yard per return average. Payton says we can look for Moore to be in the mix for those duties in '09 too.
"Obviously we're going to look at Reggie. We're going to look at Lance Moore. We're going to look at Skyler Green. We're going to look at Tracy Porter and Jason David," Payton said. "You look at five right now that are going to be getting some reps along with some of these younger guys."
After 2 straight seasons of watching the play-offs, Moore likes the Black and Gold's chances of returning to post season action. "We feel like we've got what it takes. We just have to go out and take care of business� Last year we lost a lot of close games, had a lot of injuries and I think if we take care of the things that we can take care of, then everything else will work out."
The return of a healthy Lance Moore along with Marques Colston, Devery Henderson, Jeremy Shockey and Reggie Bush will again give Drew Brees many big play options in the New Orleans passing game this fall.
For the latest on the New Orleans Saints check out Bobby Hebert and Deke Bellavia on SportsTalk weekdays from 4pm - 8pm on WWL-AM and FM and WWL.com.
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