Coming Back Stronger (14 page)

You hear a lot of players talk about “believing,” and there are several different layers to that. There’s the surface-level type of believing, where you acknowledge that something is true. Then there’s a deeper kind of belief—the type that gets inside you and actually changes you. It’s the kind of belief that changes your behavior, your attitude, and your outlook on life, and the people around you can’t help but notice.

The way I see it, belief isn’t enough on its own. Once you know the truth, you have to act on it. That’s where real faith gets legs. Other people can tell you the truth, but until you own it, it’s not worth much. It’s only when you move on your belief and exercise faith that real change can come. It’s only then that you’ll yield concrete results.

In football, it’s not enough to believe you have a great football team. I knew we had some great talent in 2006, and that was a start. But until we stepped on the field and put that belief into action, it was hollow. We had to go to work and act on that belief.

Put another way, belief is represented by the football. It’s an objective thing that exists outside of me. If I hold on to it and do nothing else with it, I can’t lead the team. However, if I have the guts to make the throw to my teammate, I am exercising faith—in myself, in my receiver, and in the coaching staff who put the play together. Faith in action is perfectly carried out on the field.

I had to trust the process when it came to my recovery, too. It wouldn’t have been enough to simply believe what my doctors were telling me about my arm, to intellectually assent to it being true. I could have agreed with Dr. Andrews that it was up to me to work hard and then retreated to the La-Z-Boy. But I needed something more than a “belief” about my comeback. I had to translate that belief into action and actually do the things they told me to do.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that living out your faith in God isn’t all that different from living out what you believe when you’re playing a sport. You can’t just talk about it—you’ve got to prove it with your actions. Following God is a day-by-day process, something you have to keep focusing on and practicing. It’s not some detached or compartmentalized thing that only affects your Sunday mornings. Whether I’m on top of the world with a win or stinging from a bad loss or an injury, I know that God is there and that he has a plan. To me, God is more than just “the Man Upstairs” who looks down on us all. He’s concerned about us as individuals. He cares about the people of New Orleans. He wants to be near those living in FEMA trailers. He has compassion for the people who lost their homes and were scattered across the country. He allowed some of these things to happen in our lives so he could shape us and mold us and give us the opportunity to come back stronger. Without the adversity, there would be no opportunity.

Faith is a gift from God, but it’s also a responsibility. It’s not enough to have it. You’ve got to live it out, even when times are tough. One of my favorite quotes is “Your actions speak so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” In other words, don’t just say it; be it.

When I came to New Orleans in 2006, I saw a lot of T-shirts that had the word Faith on the front. It was a buzzword for the people of the region, signifying that they believed in the city, that it was possible to rebuild. A lot of people took that word and applied it to our team that year too. In many ways people saw the Saints as an extension of the city and everything the community was going through. We were working together in faith, believing that things were going to come back even better than they were before. We kept on believing, even when the results were a long time coming.

As a way to motivate my teammates and give us focus for the season ahead, I often came up with a slogan or phrase to share with the team. That year, my first season with the Saints, I wanted to simplify things and get our minds and hearts in the right place as we started the regular season. I had been thinking a lot about the concept of faith for the past several months, and I decided to break down the word into an acrostic. Each letter of the word held personal meaning for me:

Fortitude

Attitude

Integrity

Trust

Humility

For the first game of the season, we were traveling to the Dawg Pound in Cleveland to play the Browns. The Wednesday before the game we had our first team meeting. I asked Coach Payton if I could have fifteen minutes at the beginning of that meeting to say a few things to the team.

I’d printed out a bunch of sheets with the word FAITH written on them, and I handed them to the guys. Then I put the same thing on the overhead projector and explained my hopes for the year ahead.

“The dictionary defines faith a lot of different ways,” I said. “Some of it has to do with religion. Other aspects of the definition talk about allegiance and duty or loyalty. I want you to know what the word means to me, and I also want you to write down what it means to you.”

All the guys came up with their own working definitions of faith and wrote them down. I encouraged them to put their papers in the front of their playbooks. “When you’re having one of those rough days, take a look at it and remember why you’re here and what we’re working toward.

“Now I want to tell you what faith means to me,” I said. “Fortitude. Attitude. Integrity. Trust. Humility.” I put the dictionary definitions of all those words on the screen.

“This is what the dictionary says about these words. But you know what? The way a book defines something can be different from how you view it and apply it in your life.

“When I think about fortitude, what comes to mind isn’t the dictionary definition. I think of it as toughness and courage. Fighting for something you know is there but you might not be able to see yet.

“Attitude. To me, attitude speaks to the way you approach life. You can’t always determine your circumstances, but you can always determine your attitude. Attitude is approaching each day with a positive mind-set, a glass-half-full mentality, knowing that as long as we do things the right way together, good things are going to happen. I have confidence that I can do my job, whatever it is, and I have confidence that the guy next to me is going to do his job. And as we grow together, there’s no team that can stop what we’re becoming.

“Integrity. A person with integrity does what he says he’s going to do. So if you tell me you’re going to show up at 6 a.m. to work out, then show up at 6 a.m. to work out. If you say you’re going to watch extra film after practice with your teammates, then make sure you’re there. We can hold each other accountable to be true to our principles, and that integrity can spread from one person to the next.

“Trust. My last coach, Marty Schottenheimer, used to say, ‘Trust is the cornerstone of every meaningful relationship.’ You have to be able to trust your teammate. Your teammate has to be able to trust you, and you have to earn that trust and respect every day. And so in everything you do, you have to build that relationship, that trust. You have to give your teammate a reason to believe in you, so make sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And make sure you’re doing it the right way.

“And finally, humility. This really sums up the meaning of teamwork. President Harry Truman said, ‘It is amazing how much you can accomplish in life if you don’t mind who gets the credit.’ Guys, if we approach this game and this season with a selfless mentality—doing whatever it takes to help this team, fulfilling the roles we’ve been given, completing our tasks without worrying about who gets the glory in the end—then we will truly be winners. And we will accomplish great things as a team.”

We left that meeting fired up about the season and the team. In the days that followed, one of our team mottoes became “Keep the faith.” Faith in each other, faith in the process, faith in our fans, faith in our coaches. And for some of us, faith in the God who had made all of this possible in the first place. The Bible puts it this way: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1, NIV).

For lack of better terminology, we’d gotten our tails kicked in preseason. We’d managed to win the first game, but we’d lost the other three. Basically we had been whupped up one side and down the other.

As we headed into the 2006 season, most critics wondered if we’d win even a handful of games. Pundits said our team would probably improve from 2005’s 3–13 record but that with a rookie coach like Sean Payton and a quarterback barely off the injured list, things didn’t look too promising. The Carolina Panthers were the favorite to win our division, and no one had much hope of us finishing anywhere but the cellar of the NFC South. Honestly, in the locker room, we were all looking at each other and saying, “Let’s just try to win one game, all right? Then we’ll worry about the rest. Just one game.”

Still, we were on the lookout for something good to happen. Those commentators hadn’t really seen us yet. They didn’t know what we were capable of doing. We had a passion for the game, we had worked hard, and we genuinely cared about each other. We might not have been expecting a Super Bowl ring, but we were serious about winning, and we wanted to do whatever it took to make our goals become reality. And we knew you can’t reach a goal if you don’t set one.

One of our goals was to return to our home field with pride. For the first time since Hurricane Katrina hit, we’d be playing at the Superdome again. We committed to do everything in our power to win that first game back there—and every home game, if possible. We were going to stand our ground at the Dome. No one was going to come into our house and push us around.

Our offense set goals about being balanced with the run game and the pass game and taking care of the football. Our defense set goals for being aggressive and taking the ball away. We had team goals and individual goals—concrete ideas about how to move forward and put our beliefs and faith into action. We were motivated to win and give it our best. But inside each of us was a question: how long would it take to win just one game? And inside of me another question burned: how well would my shoulder hold up?

We were about to find answers to those questions in Cleveland.

The Aints

There was another blessing in disguise that came out of being forced to slow down during my recovery. In the midst of getting my arm back into shape, I also had time to learn more about the history and people of New Orleans. I suppose it’s possible to play for a team and not have their story impact you, but that’s not the kind of person I am. I like to immerse myself in the team’s history and culture and put everything happening now into context. When it comes to football, whether it’s for better or for worse, there’s no team with richer history than the New Orleans Saints.

The Saints were organized in 1967. Since music is a big part of the city’s ethos, it made sense to name the team after the well-known jazz song “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Ironically, the team was formed on November 1, 1966, which also happens to be All Saints’ Day. In the four decades following, the team had a reputation around the league of being hard workers but not being able to put together many wins. They didn’t have any Super Bowl appearances, despite the talented players and coaches who had been part of the franchise over the years. But to me, out of all the players in the club’s history, the one name that rose above the others was Archie Manning.

Archie played with the Saints for ten full seasons after getting drafted out of Ole Miss in 1971. Sadly, his teams didn’t win a lot of games. In fact, during Archie’s best season with the Saints, the team only went 8–8. Despite that, he went to the Pro Bowl twice and garnered many awards for his outstanding play.

But Archie Manning is more than a football player. He’s an outstanding citizen of New Orleans and an exemplary humanitarian. Archie has made his home here and has supported the team over the years. I was told early on that none of the Saints players since Archie have ever lived in the Garden District or Uptown, where we bought our home. He and his wife, Olivia, welcomed us to town with open arms.

“Hey, anything you need, let us know,” Archie said.

He was true to his word. If I needed to know where to take Brittany for a nice night out, Archie gave me guidance. He and Olivia are such classy people, and as soon as we arrived in the city, they extended us an invitation to dinner at their house. They were role models to us in reaching out to the community, as they were integral to New Orleans’s rebuilding efforts after Katrina. Their presence alone gives people hope and a sense of pride in their city. They raised three sons who grew up cheering for the Saints and have deep roots in this area.

For most of the history of the franchise, it wasn’t easy to be a Saints fan. They never even made it to the playoffs in the first twenty years of their existence. Some may remember difficult years when fans would come to games with paper bags on their heads. The team was affectionately (or not so affectionately) referred to as the Aints.

There were high points, of course. The first regular-season play in Saints history was John Gilliam’s ninety-four-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in Tulane Stadium. Then in 1970 Tom Dempsey set an NFL record with his sixty-three-yard field goal, a record that was tied by Jason Elam but still stands today. But in spite of those few shining moments, disappointment and frustration seemed to plague the team year after year. That frustration spilled over to the fans. They desperately wanted to will the Saints to victory, but every season they seemed to be inching closer, another setback hit.

In the late 1980s, under Jim Mora, the Saints put together some good seasons. In 1987 they finally made it to the playoffs but lost their first NFC wild card game to Minnesota. Three years later they made it back to the wild card game and lost to Chicago. It was the first of three consecutive playoff appearances—and wild card game losses—in the 1990s. It looked like they had a chance to win their first ever playoff game in 1992, but the Philadelphia Eagles came back in the fourth quarter and buried the hopes of the fans and players.

This was a city that had hosted the Super Bowl seven times in twenty-one years but had never gotten close to playing in one. No matter how hard they played, no matter how frenzied the fans got, at the end of the year they always went home unhappy.

The frustration built as the years passed. In 1996, after a loss to the Carolina Panthers, head coach Jim Mora summed up the disappointment of not just that game but all the years of coming close and not being able to overcome. “We couldn’t make a first down. We couldn’t run the ball. We didn’t try to run the ball. We couldn’t complete a pass. We couldn’t stop the run. . . . I’m totally embarrassed and totally ashamed. Coaching did a horrible job. The players did a horrible job. . . . It stunk.”

The next day Jim Mora resigned. In 1997 NFL Hall of Famer Mike Ditka was hired to coach the team, but his efforts were also unsuccessful. The team desperately needed something good to happen.

In 2000 the curse was finally broken. The Saints finally won their first playoff game in a thriller against the St. Louis Rams. But the next game and the next few years proved to be disappointing. In 2004 there was talk that the team might move away from New Orleans. San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque were mentioned. Some thought that moving from the Crescent City would give the team a fresh start. Leave the past behind.

Those sentiments intensified later in 2005, but this time it was because of a meteorological phenomenon, not a football catastrophe. At the beginning of that season, a Category 5 hurricane hit, convincing most people that relocation was the only answer. No one knew for sure at that point, but the way things were going, it looked like the Saints would be marching out.