Home Team (14 page)

Thirty thousand people had taken refuge in the Superdome when they’d had no place else to go. All of our players had heard the stories and seen the TV reports. It was hot and dark those days, and the smell was bad. Food and water and medicine were scarce. Babies cried and fistfights broke out. Along with the Morial Convention Center, it really had been the shelter of last resort. Some of the worst rumors had turned out to be exaggerated. No one had actually been murdered in the Superdome after Katrina. But one man had committed suicide, and nobody had been left unscathed. And when the people did finally get out of there, most of them were shipped off to further heartbreak and despair. Even a year and a month later, images like that can mess with a player’s head.

I discussed all this with the coaches, and they quickly agreed: We had to do something to ease the players back into the Dome. Why not hold Friday’s practice there?

My concern for this game was not us being ready or energized. This was
Monday Night Football
against Atlanta, back home in New Orleans, both teams 2-0. The buzz was guaranteed. My concern was us being too tight, too distracted, too emotionally wound up—and having our execution suffer. I wanted to deal with all of that before game time.

We had to try to chase the ghosts away.

Everywhere I went that week, I could feel the excitement rising. The Saints were back in New Orleans. They were playing in the Superdome. After a year with little to cheer about, that was something right there.

The energy kept getting more intense. I could only imagine how loud the fans would be. But I could not let the team forget what their primary job was here: We were playing to win a football game. We’d worked too hard to lose our concentration. I brought this up with the players at Thursday’s practice.

“Monday has a chance to be a special night,” I told them. “It’s going to be a memorable night regardless of the outcome. But it will be a special night only if we win.”

None of this “We’re just happy to be here,” OK?

“The coaches and I, we know you’re going to be ready,” I told them. “But this game will come down to you being able to focus, much like a play-off game or a Super Bowl. Both teams will be ready. Now, will you keep your focus with the increased atmosphere and distractions and media coverage and all the other things that go into this game?

“I am counting on it.”

On Friday, everyone had a chance to check out the new locker rooms, to stare into the new field lights, to bounce up and down on the Sportexe Momentum turf. This wasn’t just a walk-though. It was an actual practice. We started at the same time the game was starting on Monday. We practiced plays we were working on. We did our usual exercises and drills. I wanted the players to experience as much as possible what they would experience on Monday night.

After we were finished practicing, I had everyone gather on the fifty-yard line. The players were sweaty in their pads and uniforms. I introduced Doug Thornton. A former Shreveport oilman and an ex-college quarterback from McNeese State, Doug had stayed in the Dome around the clock through the entire Katrina ordeal. Then he was the person in charge of renovating the Dome. “He did a phenomenal job getting this done on time,” I told the players. “It was an amazing task. We owe him. He’s been a tremendous ally to all of us.”

I introduced Benny Vanderklis, who was in charge of security and had also ridden out the storm. I wanted the team to recognize and appreciate what all these people had been doing and what they had managed to achieve. Then I tapped my hat. That was the signal.

The lights went down. The Dome stayed dark for a moment. Then both the new Jumbotrons lit up, and a powerful highlights video filled the screens. Not the kind of highlights that usually play before a football game. These were highlights of Katrina. Lowlights may be a better word.

The video was just five minutes long. But I swear, it was the most emotional five minutes of tape I’d ever seen. The rising water, the people’s faces, the houses with X’s on the doors letting the rescuers know how many bodies were inside. Those thick New Orleans accents. Very, very powerful stuff from beginning to end. And when the video was finished, these images of Katrina gave way to a song—the throaty exuberance of Hank Williams Jr. singing “Are You Ready for Some Football?”—the
Monday Night Football
theme.

Talk about a jarring juxtaposition. From “Oh, my God, look at where we’ve come from” to “Oh, my God, look where we’re going now.” This was exactly the order it would go in on Monday night.

The players looked stunned. They were just standing there in their pads in silence. I let the emotion seep in. Coaches, players, me—not a word from any of us. It was a huge, emotional moment for all of us. We were back in the Dome after all that had happened and getting ready to play. At least we went through it on Friday.

That was exactly what I was hoping for. Three nights later, when we’d all be back in the Dome again, I wanted all of us to be past that part. I wanted the rush of emotion on Friday, not on Monday night. On Monday, this team had to execute.

Because, remember, it’s only special if we win.

Monday finally came, and the Superdome literally glowed. The fans were beside themselves with anticipation. Thankfully, we had a quarterback to put on the field.

We tried to think through every last detail. We even had valet parking for the players. They’d pull up to the Dome, and fifty valets were waiting for them. They’d leave the car with a valet, and their keys would be waiting in their locker at the end of the game. No one had to worry about the parking garage.

Traffic was backed up around the Dome. One by one, the players arrived. A huge crowd of fans watched them walk inside—not down a protected tunnel but along an open chute about twenty yards long and ten feet wide. A few of the players walked straight down the middle between the lines of fans. But most veered either left or right, waving, smiling, high-fiving the fans. Energy was being transferred. The excitement was one thing no one could ignore.

The players were all supposed to be there by six thirty, two hours before the game. Most showed up by five thirty or six. But at six twenty, nobody had seen Drew Brees. This was strange. Drew would normally be a five o’clock guy. He’d get taped, get dressed, do his entire routine. He wasn’t someone who liked to rush in.

I was getting concerned. “Where is Drew?” I yelled at Greg Bensel, the PR guy. Greg made a cell phone call. He sent a text. Finally, he had an answer. “He got spun around in his Land Rover, got caught in traffic and got lost,” Greg said, looking up from his BlackBerry.

We had to send out a police escort to find our quarterback. They made a path through the traffic and led him to the garage entrance. The valet service had already stopped.

You know how tall those old Land Rovers are? Well, Drew’s was so tall, he jammed it into the top of the Superdome entryway.

This is the most important game in the city’s history. It was twenty-five minutes after six. Our starting quarterback had jammed his Land Rover into the parking garage roof. I just hoped this wasn’t a sign for the night.

As a player and as a coach, at some point or another, you have that nightmare. The national anthem is being played, and you’re two blocks away from the stadium. I knew Drew was dying before the game.

“Hey, Drew,” I said, needling him a little when he finally arrived. “Glad you were able to join us tonight.”

When game time finally arrived, the Dome was in a frenzy. Katrina had scattered Saints fans everywhere, but 72,968 somehow managed to find their way to the Superdome. It was a spectacular, New Orleans-style event. Cannons shot black-and-gold confetti. Music filled the air. Green Day and U2 performed “Wake Me When September Ends” and “The Saints Are Coming” and a reworked version of “House of the Rising Sun.” They showed the Katrina video, and everyone got quiet. The Hank Williams Jr. song came up. “What a pleasure it is to welcome you all back inside the Louisiana Superdome,” Mike Tirico told the ESPN audience, which was the network’s largest ever for a sporting event.

The feeling inside the Dome was absolutely electric. The symbolism was impossible to ignore. After fifty-six weeks, football was returning to New Orleans. Was it too much to hope the city was also coming back to life? The place was fully awash in emotion.

It was the loudest crowd I’d ever heard in my life. I know I never walked into a stadium feeling like more was riding on the game. The fanfare and the atmosphere were just unbelievable. There were some familiar faces: former President George H. W. Bush, Spike Lee, Harry Connick Jr., Hillary Swank and NFL commissioners Paul Tagliabue and Roger Goodell. Dallas Mavericks head coach Avery Johnson had a sideline pass.

But it was longtime Saints fans at home with their team again.

And not for one single moment did our guys forget why we were there.

The game got off to an amazing start. On the very first possession, the Falcons went three and out and were forced to punt deep in their own territory.

Special teams coordinator John Bonamego had convinced me we had a real good punt-block rush. He gave Steve Gleason, my assassin on paintball day, a specific assignment. This was perfect for Gleason. He didn’t have great athletic ability. He didn’t have that much speed. At five foot eleven, 212 pounds, he was definitely on the small side for an NFL player. As a football player, he didn’t have a lot on paper. But you could give Gleason an assignment, and he just had a way of getting it done. If he hit this just right, he could make a kill like he had at paintball.

I didn’t plan on trying to block a punt so early. But Bonamego didn’t seem eager to wait. “You want to block the first one?” he asked. I knew we wanted to run the block at some point. Teams rush eight and attempt to block punts all the time. But so soon?

I heard myself say, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

And we did. Eight guys rushed. Gleason hit the A gap, pulled a little loop stunt and went right up the middle to block the punt. It came off the punter’s foot. It hit Gleason.

Curtis Deloatch fell on the ball in the end zone. It was 7-0, New Orleans. And the roar from the crowd made everything else sound like a whisper.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything in my life louder than that,” Gleason said later.

Michael Vick had to agree. “I never in my life heard a crowd roar so loud,” Vick said. “It just goes to show the appreciation they have for having the New Orleans Saints back in the Dome, bringing football back to the city. I commend them for that. They deserve it.”

By the time the game was over, the Saints had won 23-3. Brees had thrown for 191 yards and the glory was spread all around. Deuce McAllister ran for eighty-one yards on nineteen attempts. Reggie Bush had fifty-three yards on thirteen. John Carney kicked two field goals in the second quarter, including a fifty-one-yarder that inched above the crossbars just as halftime arrived. The Saints’ defense held Vick to twelve completions in thirty-one passing attempts. His runs logged a grand total of twenty-seven yards, not counting a single late-in-the-game thirty-yard run when the Saints were up by twenty.

“From the moment I signed with the Saints,” Drew said after the game, “I was looking forward to this. It was a great night. It’s something we’ll never forget.”

“It was so emotional on the sidelines,” Reggie agreed. “We talked all week about making a difference with special teams. Today we put it to work and made it happen.”

Even Falcons coach Mora had to give us a nod.

“Hard as it is to lose this game,” he said, “I’d be lying if I didn’t say there was a little, little piece of me that really appreciated what this game meant to this city. Unfortunately, we made it way too easy for the Saints.”

As the fans walked out of the Dome and into the streets, they left with a glimmer of possibility. If the Saints could do this, maybe the city could too.

Would we have gotten all this credit if we’d lost the football game? Probably some of it. Surely the commentators would have cut us some slack. The fans too. We could have blamed Katrina, right?

“Whether we would have won that game or not, I think the fans would have still been happy,” receiver Joe Horn said. “If we would have lost, I’m sure they would have still been proud of us. They would have still been happy because this organization is still in New Orleans.”

But that would not have been enough for the team, Horn said. “We had to win that football game.”

Mike Ditka, who’d done his own stint as a Saints head coach, said he noticed something new. “What Sean Payton is doing down there is outstanding,” he said the next morning. “This is the beginning of a new era. There’s a whole new enthusiasm.”

You have no idea how much I was hoping he was right.

“This night belongs to the city, the state of Louisiana and everyone in the Gulf South,” I told the media after the game.

We gave the game ball to the people of New Orleans. Native son Avery Johnson accepted on the people’s behalf.

Who deserved it more?

2006 WAS THE SEASON
the Saints and New Orleans proved to the world that neither one of us had given up.

As I rode around the city that fall, I could think of many ways to describe the local conditions. Battered. Devastated. Maddeningly slow to come back. The word I wouldn’t use was normal. There were pockets of hope, for sure. But not nearly enough of them. That’s why having the Saints back home was so important. In those first eighteen months after Katrina, the team stood out like a beacon.

I’ve heard people argue that 2006 was the most significant season the Saints have ever had, even more important than the Super Bowl season that would come three years later. These people have a point. It was the year of Drew and Reggie and a new breed of player. It was a year of beating expectations and winning in the face of daunting odds. 2006 was the year the Saints made clear they were staying in New Orleans for the long term.