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METAIRIE, La. -- Drew Brees top three receiving targets this season range in age from 23 to 24. None has played more than two NFL seasons and one is a rookie.They way theyve been playing is helping the Saints 37-year-old quarterback continue accumulating elite passing numbers.Now in his 16th season, Brees said one benefit to having such a young receiver group is that they dont know any other way of playing receiver in the NFL except the way that we are molding them and teaching them.I love that, Brees added. That is perfect.Of course, young players still have to be talented and have good instincts -- and it has become apparent that Brandin Cooks, Michael Thomas and Willie Snead all do.All those guys ... are good football players and the guy pulling the trigger -- hes big-time, said Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid, whose club hosts the Saints on Sunday. He knows how to utilize all of those guys.Brees said that when all of your regular receivers havent played in another teams scheme, it can be easier for a veteran QB to say, This is how it needs to be done, and this is what I am expecting. I can also tell you that this is when the ball is going to be there and that is when you need to be there.And they have been in the right place, at the right time, routinely. Brees 346.8 yards per game this season is the most of any NFL QB who has played at least five games.Cooks, a former first-round draft choice now in his third season, had an 87-yard touchdown catch in last Sundays 41-38 victory over Carolina , and it wasnt even Cooks longest reception of the young season. He had a 98-yard touchdown catch in a 35-34 loss to Oakland to open the regular season. Having just turned 23 last month, Cooks leads the Saints with 428 yards receiving with 11 games to play.Thomas, a second-round draft pick last spring out of Ohio State, leads the Saints with 26 receptions. Thomas also has a TD catch in each of his past three games, tying him with Cooks for the team lead at three.Coach Sean Payton, who designs the offense, has credited the 23-year-old Thomas for his ability to correct mistakes within minimal repetitions in practice.Cooks noted that Thomas is working hard and asking questions. That is what you like to see from a rookie.Hes always in the meetings, being attentive and asking a lot of questions, Cooks continued. I feel like those questions that hes asking are showing up on the film. Now, hes being more consistent.Thomas, whose talent has been evident in the way he holds on to difficult catches, said he also puts a premium on studying the scheme and his role in it.If you know what you need to know about the game plan and the plays, it slows down the game tremendously, Thomas said.Snead, an undrafted free agent out of Ball State in 2014, did not play in his first regular-season game until last season, when he nearly reached 1,000 yards receiving.This season, the 24-year-old is third on the club in yards receiving with 296 -- 11 behind Thomas -- and has caught two touchdown passes despite missing a game last month with a toe injury.The fact that all three receivers are thriving, said Chiefs safety Eric Berry, means you have to be aware that anybody could get the ball at any given time and just be aware that everyones a threat.Snead said the key to the quick maturity of New Orleans young receiver group has been the ability to learn from and practice with a record-setting veteran quarterback such as Brees, who encourages receivers to work extra with him after practice and even during the offseason.Brees also has a leadership role on the club and is known to be an effective communicator.Its us matching his intensity and how serious he is about the game and preparation, Snead said. All of us young guys understand who he is and what he does are very important and vital to our success.Game notes Starting LT Terron Armstead, who has missed the past two games with knee soreness, completed a second straight practice on Thursday and said he is hoping to play Sunday. ... DE Paul Kruger also has practiced this week after missing last Sundays game and said he is optimistic about playing against the Chiefs. ... LB Dannell Ellerbe, who has not yet played this season, practiced on a limited basis on Thursday, raising prospects for his return. However, he was not available to speak with reporters. ... Missing practice on Thursday were OT Andrus Peat (groin), CB Delvin Breaux (fibula), CB Sterling Moore (abdomen), RB Daniel Lasco (hamstring) and DT Nick Fairley (non-injury related).---Online: AP NFL coverage: pro32.ap.org and (at)AP-NFL San Diego Padres Store . Ryan Garbutt had a goal and two assists as Dallas snapped a six-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday night. San Diego Padres Gear . Howard Ganz, an MLB lawyer, said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos that Rodriguezs claims do not come "remotely close" to what is needed to overturn an arbitration decision in federal court. https://www.cheappadresjerseys.us/ . Louis Blues absence from top spot in the TSN. Padres Jerseys China . Fred Couples, captain of the U.S. side, put it all into perspective. "We know whos in charge," he said. Wholesale Padres Jerseys . -- The goal posts lying flat on the field, Arizonas fans lingered on the field, congregating around the locker room entrance nearly 30 minutes after rushing out of the stands. Was there ever a happier rugby day than that afternoon at the Millennium Stadium in May 2006 when Munster finally won the Heineken Cup?Their exploits over the previous few years had provided a lovable underdog narrative which did wonders for the standing of the tournament in its formative seasons. Year after year theyd make their way to the later stages, find some cruel way of not winning the trophy and yet be back again the following season, their hopes undimmed.As early as 2002 I heard fans on the bus back to Toulouse from their defeat at Castres speculating that weve had a good run, but thats probably it, unable to believe that they would be able to sustain their challenge once Mick Galwey and Peter Clohessy had retired.But back they came every year, and in ever-increasing numbers, red-shirted hordes whose amiability and free spending on their travels made them just about the most welcome invading army in recorded European history. To see Anthony Foley lifting the trophy in Cardiff was, much as Bobby Charlton raising footballs equivalent had been in 1968, to celebrate the completion of a great sporting journey.They were sustained by forces on show under much less happy circumstances this past weekend. As Tyrone Howe, an eloquently dignified presence on Sky TV put it, there is no team where the sense of rugby as a family is greater than Munster.They were driven on by those fans, and their rapport with players like Anthony Foley, who died shockingly young and suddenly at the age of 42.It is a cruel, early end to a remarkable rugby life. You can hardly speak of it as unfulfilled, given how much he had accomplished as a player, but it is impossible to wonder might not still have been to come as a coach.Might he have led a second coming for Munster, once more (and against still greater odds) fashioning a countervailing force against the greater resources of the French and English clubs? Was he destined to coach Ireland? The IRFU is perhaps the most relaxed of all of the four home unions about overseas appointments, but must surely regard anyone who gets to be head coach of one of the provincial franchises it part-owns as a potential future national coach.There is a sense of how much he meant -- most of all in Munster and in Ireland, but also across the whole European game -- in the eloquence of reactions within a few hours of his death being announced.There were the fans singing Fields of Athenry at the gates of the Stade Yves-du-Manoir. Weve had Howe and Donal Lenihan on Sky, along with Robert Kitson and Tom English in print. There was Nick Mullinss typically perceptive reaction that Foley was one of those people that you felt you knew them even if you didnt, because they spoke and played with their heart, along with Munster CEOs Garrett Fitzgeralds description of him -- and you know something unusual is happening when official statements get eloqquent -- as the embodiment of Munster rugby.ddddddddddddYou could see that in the way he played. The family was rugby royalty. He was the son of Brendan -- one of the Munstermen who beat the All Blacks in 1978. But it was -- suitably for a citizen of a Republic -- a very democratic form of royalty. Crowds in all sports love most of all the players who feel like projections of themselves, and give the impression that if they were not playing they would be among the masses on the terraces.Munsters singular achievement was to put out entire teams who felt like that, but none more so than Foley. But if he was the man on the Thomond Park terraces raised to sporting eminence, he was also a singular and distinctive figure.It wasnt just that he was a very fine No.8 forward; he was the smartest player of Keith Woods acquaintance, with a gift for identifying space sufficient to impress a top-class wing like Howe. To have played 71 consecutive Heineken Cup ties was a measure of his commitment and durability, while his 23 tries from No.8 could be a long-stay resident of the competition record books.He was also handled important changes with aplomb in an era full of them. Archetypal local hero he may have been, but he played through an era which saw the provincial representative team his father had played for transformed into a highly competitive professional franchise which recruited prime international talent, yet still retained the local core so vital to the passion which drove both players and supporters.He went through the transition from amateurism to professionalism like an Irish version of Jason Leonard, mixing the discipline and competitiveness essential to professional success with a continued enjoyment of the social side of the game. And you dont have to be that traditional to think that enjoying the odd pint of Guinness may make for more relaxed, better balanced sportsmen than regarding ones body as a temple.And his was an era in which Irish rugby players went from being likeable losers to winners -- still generally likeable, but first and foremost winners. The teams he played in usually won, starting with the Shannon teams with whom he won five Irish championships, through to Munsters triumphs in Europe and the transformation of the Irish team once the Five Nations became Six in 2000.While that change in fortunes is quite rightly linked in most memories to the arrival of players like Brian ODriscoll and Peter Stringer, it should be noted that it coincided with the recall, after a three year absence, of Foley, who was to play in all but one of Irelands Six Nations games to the end of the 2005 championship, winning 21 out of 29 matches across that time.Cruelly cut short as it was, this was still one hell of a rugby life. ' ' '