by Sean Payton
When the second quarter began, we changed directions—left to right now. And we started to get a little momentum going. We weren’t scoring touchdowns yet. But it seemed like things might be shifting our way a bit.
Our next drive, which had started late in the first quarter, looked a little more promising. Brees connected on four passes for thirty-six yards, getting as far as the Colts’ twenty-two. But on third down, he was thrown for a seven-yard loss by Dwight Freeney. The supposedly ailing Freeney, who’d been nursing an injured ankle, hit our line like a sledgehammer through Chinese drywall. His one-handed sack was better proof of his health than any X-ray. We settled for a forty-six-yard Garrett Hartley field goal and were damned happy to have it. It was something on the board at least. In the final two minutes of the half, we drove to first and goal on the Colts’ three. A touchdown would have tied things up. But the run on third didn’t get us far enough. Instead of kicking a field goal, I thought we should go for it.
I called one of those check-with-me plays. You run or pass, depending on the defense. They expected a pass. Drew got us to the run, but we didn’t gain the yards we needed and didn’t score. The only good news was where the Colts got the ball. Their own one-yard line. We held them. They punted, and we inched our way back into field goal range. Hartley hit from forty-four as time ran out. What a run our young kicker was having.
I knew that second Hartley field goal also got me off the hook. People were already second-guessing my decision two minutes earlier to go for it on fourth. Getting the field goal now was some consolation. I still think it was the right call. What you didn’t want to do so late in the half was kick off to the Colts, let them have the ball on the twenty and put Peyton Manning in a two-minute drill. The way the game was unfolding, that sounded like trouble to me.
Halftime score: 10-6 Colts.
This was not our finest thirty minutes of football. We were not where I had hoped to be. But we were not out of it at all. Our second-quarter momentum was a whole lot better than our first. Our time of possession was improving. We were starting to move the ball. We were playing better overall. And we were only down by four. It’s not like the Saints had never come from behind before. Four points down at the half? That was almost a tie game to us.
That’s what I was thinking, anyway, as Pete Townshend blasted into the first chords of “Pinball Wizard” and Roger Daltrey began to sing: “Ever since I was a young boy . . .”—which had obviously been a few years earlier. We had no time to enjoy the Who reunion. We had a busy thirty-five-minute halftime in the locker room. The issue we had was a fundamental one: How could we harness the momentum we’d begun to feel in the second quarter and dramatically expand on it?
The first thing I knew we should do was to keep playing in the same direction. We’d gone left to right in the second quarter. The wind was insignificant. But for whatever reason, that had worked out better for us than right to left. Since Indianapolis was receiving, the direction of play coming back was up to us. It’s hard to prove this actually matters, but it can’t hurt, right? Why mess with a good thing? I told the captains to let the official know: “I want the same direction as the second quarter. We’ll go left to right.”
One other thing is important to know here. Super Bowl halftimes are much longer than the usual kind—thirty-five minutes instead of twelve. We had light food in there. I told the guys, “Take your shoulder pads off. Put on a dry T-shirt. We have time here, a ton of time. Rehydrate.” Everyone had told us Super Bowl halftimes seem like an eternity.
The players sat and relaxed while the coaches drew up a new list of openers for the second half. Usually, you don’t have enough time for that. This time we did. We figured, “Let’s put another eight plays up.” We made the list. We put it on PowerPoint. We projected it up on the screen, where the players could see it. One by one, I was going through the plays with the offense.
The first one was a play-action pass to Pierre Thomas. The second play was a naked bootleg to Devery Henderson. The third play, we ran it. The fourth play or the fifth play would be a screen to Thomas. But I interrupted myself before I was done. “Listen, we’re going to start the second half with ambush,” I said. “So when we get the ball, it’s gonna be on the left hash mark, the forty- or forty-five-yard line, give or take.”
I didn’t even want to raise the possibility that the Colts might end up with the ball.
“So you guys gotta be ready for these six plays,” I told the offense.
By now, the Who was moving into “Baba O’Riley.” I walked over to the other side of the locker room, where the defense was, and I told that part of the team: “We’re gonna run this onside kick. How do you guys feel about it?”
“Let’s do it,” several of them said.
“All right,” I answered. “But you gotta be ready now for a short field if we don’t recover this thing.” It’s what Gregg would call a watch-this moment. A watch-this moment is the defense saying, “Watch this. Watch what we do here even though our backs are against the wall like this.”
I hated to even raise the possibility of the play not working. But I felt like I had to. We’d be asking these guys to deal with the consequences—the powerful Colts offense starting their first drive of the half halfway down the field. The defense responded exactly as I had hoped.
We were all on the same page now. Everyone was all in.
It was an unconventional move, trying an onside kick so early in the game. Most coaches and football analysts would tell you it isn’t worth the risk. An onside kick, they would say, is a desperation move, really only suited for late in a losing game. Almost without exception, that’s when the play is called.
When we had studied the play over the previous week or so, we had concluded that the chance of success was north of 60 percent, south of 75 percent. If you search “surprise onside kicks in the NFL,” there aren’t too many examples. But if you pulled up the cases where it has been used, that’s about where the number would land. Those odds sounded pretty good, I thought. But they were a lot more comforting on Wednesday afternoon in New Orleans than they were in Miami at eight thirty on Sunday night. I didn’t even want to think how I would explain to a roomful of 130 reporters at the postgame press conference: “OK, I understand the kick didn’t work, but let me tell you what I was thinking.” That could get ugly fast.
But there was no backing down now.
We’d practiced the kick repeatedly. We were confident Morstead could deliver the ball. We believed our guys could get to it in a hurry. We loved the idea of opening the half with a dramatic in-your-face move. We knew we had to do something to rattle these Colts.
Plus, I liked the unspoken message such a bold call sent to our team. The unspoken message was this: “I believe in you. We are here to win.”
33
GAME CHANGER
AS WE CAME OUT of the locker room, there was still some smoke from the Who’s performance. The NFL crew was breaking down the stage. The CBS sideline reporter, Solomon Wilcots, grabbed me for a quick interview. I gave no hint about what was coming next. Everything was moving quickly. It was all very efficient. There was no doubt this was halftime at the Super Bowl. And as I walked toward our bench, I noticed a couple of officials getting ready to tee up the second half.
Oh, my God. Something hit me! A horrible thought suddenly raced through my head. “What the fuck am I doing?” I said to myself.
Just then one of the officials came over to confirm the start of the second half.
“Coach, Indianapolis is receiving, and you’re heading this way,” he said, motioning left to right.
That was the problem right there. If we were trying an ambush, that wasn’t the direction we wanted to go. A sharp onside kick to the left would put the ball right near the Indianapolis bench. You’d never want a human judgment like that—who has the ball?—to be made around thirty blue jerseys, the coaching staff and everyone else from the Indianapolis Colts.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa, whoa!” I said to the official. “Hold on! I want to go right to left! Right to left!”
“We had you going left to right, Coach.”
“No, no, no. I want to go right to left. Flip it.”
“All right.” The official shrugged. And they flipped the direction of play.
I don’t know how I could have missed that. At this level in this industry, that would have been a major, major mistake. Never do that! You always want to run it toward your own bench. In the event there’s a mosh pit and two or three officials are trying to sort through whose ball it is, the last thing you want them seeing is a sea of blue.
I know I like the Who. I must have gotten caught up in the moment there. What can I say? I’d have been in the coach’s wasteland if that had gone through.
The players took the field. Pointing in the right direction now. The official blew the whistle signaling the start of the second-half play.
Here it came.
Morstead hit the kick, and it was perfect. The ball traveled almost fifteen yards past the line of scrimmage.
You have to sympathize with Hank Baskett and the rest of the Colts’ kickoff-return crew. This kick was exactly what they weren’t expecting, and it was exactly what they didn’t want. They certainly acted surprised.
The ball careened off Baskett’s helmet and into our Chris Reis’s lap. But it didn’t stop there. The ball slid down Chris’s leg—then the scrum ensued.
Jonathan Casillas was the guy who really made the difference. Just as the ball was reaching the lower legs of Chris Reis, Baskett reached desperately for it, pulling as hard as he could. But Casillas’s body was firmly in the mix. He managed to keep several Colts players back.
The whole thing lasted—What? A minute? Ninety seconds? From where I was standing, it felt like two years. I would have waited twenty if that’s what it took to end up with the ball. Having ambush succeed was that important.
When the bodies were finally untangled and yanked off the pile, it was our ball on the forty-two-yard line.
Hail, Ambush!
If you doubt the advantage of having all this unfold on our side of the field, look at the replay tape. There are Bill Johnson and Greg McMahon and me and all these Saints players. I’m not saying this was a jump ball. But if it had been a jump ball or anything close to questionable possession, we’d have had the advantage for sure.
Bill had said something similar to his team in the week before the San Francisco game. “At some point, I might just do this, and you guys gotta make me look right.” That’s empowering. It can’t be some crazy, out-there, radical idea. The percentages have to make sense. It’s sticking on fifteen when the dealer has an eight.
Credit our guys. They made it happen. And nothing went as planned. Courtney Roby was supposed to block Hank Baskett. Baskett dipped to his own left. Roby got a piece of him, but not as much as he would have liked. Roman Harper was the primary recovery guy. Chris Reis fell back into that area too. So it wasn’t exactly how we envisioned it when we practiced it all those times. But our guys made the play.
34
WINNING TIME
NOW IT WAS TIME to play some football. As flat as our opening plays were in the first half, that’s how well our openers clicked in the second.
We started at the left hash mark at the forty-two-yard line, just like we had spoken about. We moved right through our openers—play one, play two, play three, play four, play five, screen pass to Pierre Thomas, touchdown.
There was a whole new confidence on the field—and in the coach.
When you as a coach talk about an onside kick and the eight plays that follow, and then you score on play six? It’s back to “Hey, they’re gonna throw eggs at our bus in Philly”—and they do. It’s just a question of how many. And when the eggs really do hit the bus—Well, it looks like the coach just may know what he’s talking about. Instant credibility.
Momentum time! We were just going from right to left now.
We understood. It was going to take more than just an onside kick and one series to beat Manning and the Colts. We certainly knew that. Reducing Manning’s opportunities was going to be critical. That fell on everyone—offense, defense and special teams. That’s the essence of our team and what made this a complementary game. All three aspects held up their ends of the bargain.
Defensively, we really began to get our stops and came up with some key plays in that second half.
We scored the touchdown off Pierre Thomas’s screen. But to the credit of Peyton Manning and his veteran team, they came right back with a seventy-six-yard, ten-play drive and answered with another score of their own. Joseph Addai scooted across the goal line from the four, putting the Colts back on top 17-13. It was a big drive for them. Peyton was outstanding in that drive. Outstanding. Hartley answered that with a third field goal, this one from forty-seven yards, leaving the Colts just one point ahead. Hartley was the first field goal kicker in Super Bowl history to hit three from more than forty yards.
We traded some field position back and forth. Indianapolis attempted a fifty-one-yard field goal. Stover was wide left and a little short. It was still early in the fourth quarter. But it kept them from scoring, and it gave us the ball near midfield.
Now Brees was catching fire. His next burst was a perfect Saints production, seven different players getting the ball, started by a twelve-yard Reggie run and ending with a two-yard touchdown pass to Jeremy Shockey. Shockey not only contributed to us being there. He scored on a play from the tight red zone. His journey’s come full circle now. He was healthy and able to play in this game. When he was with the Giants, he was on IR when they won the Super Bowl.
So we scored the touchdown with Shockey, and it was obvious we had to go for two here to extend our lead to seven. At this moment, the score was 22-17. We called a run-or-pass play depending on the defense. The Colts blitzed. Drew got us to the right play with Lance Moore and threw the pass. And in my mind’s eye, as quickly as it happened, I thought, “It’s incomplete.” There was a banter moment with the officials. “Coach, he didn’t maintain possession.” “Yes, he did.” As we were engaged in that discussion, the guys were seeing the camera angles upstairs.
“Coach, throw the flag,” they said. “It’s a catch. Not a gray area at all.” On review, the officials agreed. It was a great play by Lance, a guy who was injured a lot of the season, a guy who we almost put on injured reserve. We’d held out hope his hamstring and his ankle would get better, and they had.
Now it was 24-17 Saints.
Manning mounted another drive, threatening to tie the game again. But a Tracy Porter interception at the Saints’ twenty-six—and his seventy-four-yard dance to the end zone—put an end to those dreams for good. After the extra point, it was 31-17 Saints.
Finally, the first real whiff of victory was in the South Florida air.
The Ying Yang Twins had that song “Stand Up & Get Crunk.” It was a favorite of the Atlanta Falcons, but we kind of stole it, just adopted it. And every time we scored a touchdown in the Superdome, as we lined up to kick off, that song would come on. And we scored a lot.
That song produced an instant feeling of “Good!” If you were Pavlov’s dog, every time you heard that, you thought, “Good, we just scored.” It reached the point where Gregg Williams, our coordinator on defense, wanted to hear the song at the end of practice a few weeks earlier. It was playing usually when they were on defense. Offense had just scored.
We’d be out on the field defensively, and we’d still be hearing the end of “Stand Up & Get Crunk.” We had played it twice during the week in Miami over a loudspeaker system at the beginning of practice just to get the juices going. Played it loud. But when Tracy Porter scored, we were lining up to kick off, and all of a sudden over the loudspeaker system came “Stand Up & Get Crunk.” I thought to myself: “Ornstein! How did he get that done?”
The crowd went crazy. It had to be 80 percent New Orleans Saints fans. Even at the Super Bowl in Miami
, we were the home team.
Porter’s pick wasn’t just a testament to his skills. It was a result of his careful preparation and game planning. “I’d seen it over and over—third down,” Porter said of Wayne’s pattern. “That was a big route for them to convert on. Through the numerous amounts of film study that we’d done all week in preparing for the Super Bowl. It happened just like I was watching it on film. I made the break on it, and here comes the end zone.”
After the interception and the score, we were kicking off, and the defense was back on the field. Were these guys ever going to get a rest?
Thankfully, Troy Evans got a cramp on the field after the kickoff play. He had trouble getting up. It turned out he was fine, but the officials blew it. They gave a TV time-out and allowed the defense to catch their breath.
We got the defense back on the field, but now it was eight minutes later rather than four. And on the very first play, Jabari Greer dislocated his right ring finger. Three minutes left. The problem was Randall Gay had had the flu this whole game. He’d been in and out. Now he was out. He was our third corner. He was throwing up. So Usama Young, who’d moved to safety, was our backup-contingency-plan corner, and he had to go into the game.
So here’s your worst nightmare. You’re defending this fourteen-point lead, and you’re down to a safety playing corner. The clock had stopped. We’d just called a time-out, which was a little unusual. We called time-out and got the trainer and doctor over. Jabari put his hand out. His finger made a due right. It went right at one of the knuckles. It wasn’t broken. It was dislocated. Dr. Jones, our team doctor, grabbed this finger—and just jerked it. I almost passed out looking at it. We still were at a break here.
The trainer, Scottie, had been trying to get a splint on the fingers. I looked at him like, “Just tape this thing to the pinkie, and let’s go! We don’t have time for a splint here.”