Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life

by Sean Payton;Ellis Henican

  This was Training Camp 101. There was nothing about it that was easy. I asked Joe Vitt: “Do we go tomorrow in pads, or do we back off?”

  That was a dumb question to ask Joe Vitt.

  “We keep fuckin’ going full pads,” he said. That was always Vitt’s message. Always. It wasn’t until I heard his tone change that we all began to wonder: Maybe we needed to back off a little.

  The results we were seeing could not be ignored. These players were getting stronger. More important, they were getting tougher. Even the coaches were starting to get some rhythm here. This was the first time most of these guys had ever coached together. They too were becoming a team.

  But it was becoming obvious, the importance of occasional breaks. Everyone needed a break. Not necessarily paintball. Something a little cooler maybe. A training camp excursion more appropriate for the Mississippi heat. These breaks would become as crucial to the curriculum as block-and-tackle drills and wind sprints.

  Twenty-five minutes outside Jackson, there was a water park. The owner is a big Saints fan. He agreed to shut down the park on a Wednesday. He said he’d leave the concession stand open with pizza, burgers and cold drinks. It would just be us. Again, we kept the trip a surprise.

  “I do not want word getting out,” I told the coaches in our staff meeting. Everyone got assignments. One coach coordinated the buses. Someone else led the start of practice. Someone slipped shorts and towels into every player’s locker while the team was on the field. Again, every detail mattered.

  These guys had put up with a whole lot of punishment. But by now, they were approaching the point of mutiny. I know I didn’t feel like walking any planks. First thing in the morning, the coaches led them through the usual stretches and warm-ups. Then we pulled everyone up. I gave them some long-winded speech that transitioned gradually into the important of temperature control.

  “You guys ever been to a water park before?” I asked.

  You’d be surprised how many players didn’t raise their hands. Just like paintball, these were new experiences for many of them.

  The players sprinted inside. They got the shorts and towels from their lockers. We were on the buses in five minutes.

  We had made the trip mandatory. Had it been presented as optional, it would have been just me and the coaches and our inner tubes. Many of the players would have retired to their wedding cakes for naps.

  When we pulled up and they saw the wave pool, lazy river and all the water-park bells and whistles, they were a team of six-year-olds again.

  After three hours, it was nearing time to leave. There was this one slide at the south end of the park that had caught everyone’s eye. This was the high dive of water slides, about four stories up with wooden steps and a long flume at the bottom.

  The players devised a contest—offense versus defense, five men from each side. Which side could slide the farthest?

  The winning team would get an extra hour of curfew Friday night. Two weeks into a training camp, an extra hour of curfew was like gold bullion.

  Immediately, the players began to strategize. Was it size? Was it weight? Which five players would be the best? Like any group of children, they had trouble deciding. Everything was up for grabs. Eventually, the offense had its five. So did the defense. One by one, the players climbed the wooden stairs to the top. One by one, they came flying down.

  But one fact was becoming apparent. If you went down the slide immediately after the slider before you, you’d end up sliding a little farther at the end. Some of the water would have splashed from the flume, and the slide wouldn’t have filled up yet. Four inches of water produces less drag than eight.

  Scott Fujita was cleanup for the defense. Fujita’s from Southern California. He’s linear, six foot five. He’s a surfer dude.

  Charles Grant had just gone before him. Their strategy was brilliant. Grant wasn’t going to hit the mark for him. Grant’s job was to take his three-hundred-pound frame and displace as much of the water as possible.

  Fujita followed in Grant’s wake, easily beating any of the previous bests. On the field and off, the players were learning to cooperate.

  15

  TEST DRIVE

  IT WAS TIME TO take this team for a test drive.

  But so much wasn’t ready yet, and I don’t just mean Drew’s shoulder or Deuce’s knee. While we’d been working frantically to rebuild a football team, a parallel campaign was beginning to pick up speed, the earliest rebuilding of some crucial parts of New Orleans. By midsummer, huge amounts were still undone. Lakeview, Broadmoor, the Ninth Ward, certainly the Mississippi Gulf Coast, were not moving nearly as quickly as people had hoped for. But some actual pockets of success could now be identified. Many of the downtown hotels and many of the larger restaurants were open again, even if major convention business was now a distant memory. The French Quarter—the city’s historic jewel, which hadn’t flooded at all—looked almost the same as it always had. And as insurance checks were slowly reaching homeowners and a big rush of immigrant laborers arrived, the glorious sound of hammers and power tools could be heard in neighborhoods like Uptown, Marigny and Gentilly, in Metairie and on the West Bank. The Superdome was still a work in progress. As the shelter of last resort, it had taken Katrina hard. But the reports we were getting from Poydras Avenue said genuine progress was being made. The state officials overseeing the massive project had been amazingly focused. Mr. Benson, the NFL commissioner’s office, and even city hall were pitching in. Everyone seemed to understand. If the Saints were going to remain New Orleans’ home team, they had to have someplace to play.

  And soon.

  Since we didn’t have our stadium back yet, our four preseason games had to be played outside New Orleans. Two of those were considered home games, despite the far-flung geography. We played the Dallas Cowboys in the northern Louisiana city of Shreveport and hosted the Indianapolis Colts right across the street from the Millsaps campus at Jackson Memorial Stadium.

  Shreveport is actually closer to Dallas than to New Orleans. For decades, that was Cowboys country. There were some Saints fans in North Louisiana in the late summer of 2006, though not nearly as many as there are today. Still, it made a lot of sense to bring a preseason Cowboys-Saints game to Shreveport. Both teams had a claim on the region. The rivalry was real. The tickets sold briskly. Turnout for the game was strong. And it wasn’t like the Dome was ready anyway.

  That preseason “home” game was my first chance to coach against Bill Parcells. I’d been his assistant, of course, the previous three years in Dallas. And this wouldn’t be the only Saints-Cowboys matchup of 2006. We had a regular-season game on the schedule for Week Fourteen at Dallas. But this first matchup was like a rite of passage for me.

  Which made the lopsided results even more embarrassing. We got our butts kicked that night by the Cowboys, 30-7.

  Now, I knew this was only preseason. But when you come out of a game like that, you have to say to yourself, “It wasn’t that we didn’t play our starters. It wasn’t that we were still learning our plays. Regardless of what we had done, it wouldn’t have mattered. They thumped us. Badly.”

  Preseason results don’t count in any official way. But understand this: In preseason, you can gain or lose confidence. Clearly this was a game we viewed as a setback.

  I sat in the locker room with Mickey, right before we got on the buses. It was just Mickey and me. Feeling dejected, I turned to him and said flat-out, “We might not win three games this year.”

  I half believed that.

  After what we’d just shown on the field in Shreveport, Mickey couldn’t argue. “Hey, you wanted to be the head coach,” he said.

  On this whole ride, that was the emotional low point for me, my moment of greatest pessimism. We’d worked so hard all summer. We’d sweated and strained and slept on wedding cake beds. And we still had so far to go. It was frustrating, downright maddening. Of the two teams we’d just seen on the field, one was so much further along in
its growth. The Cowboys were bigger and better, and they’d been on Parcells’s program in ’03, ’04, ’05 and now in ’06—four years of systematic improvement. It showed. We were at the very beginning of our journey.

  But we didn’t sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. No one wanted to hear about our labor pains. Instead, we just got busier, trying to improve the team. What choice did we have? Parcells had already preached that success was a journey. It doesn’t come instantly. But one way to avoid it for sure was to give up the hunt.

  A week after the Dallas disappointment, we traded for Scott Shanle, who had been part of the Cowboys team that had whipped us. He started immediately for us at weak-side linebacker, where he’s been a huge asset for the past four years.

  We also made a trade with Philadelphia for Mark Simoneau. He jumped into the middle linebacker position. Remember what I said about other people’s rosters? We needed to upgrade at linebackers. Obtaining two starters one week before the regular season was an over-the-top example of that. By this time, Donté Stallworth and Jonathan Sullivan were long gone.

  The game in Jackson, our third in the preseason, was against the Indianapolis Colts. We lost 27-14. But it wasn’t the score or even the loss I remember most vividly. It was an interception that Drew Brees threw. That concerned me. The ball just floated over our receiver’s head and into the hands of the Colts’ cornerback. That ball was begging, pleading, almost demanding to be intercepted. And the play was a jarring reminder that Drew’s shoulder was not fully healed. There were a couple of other throws as well in that game that gave all of us pause. We didn’t lose faith in Drew. We had seen real progress. And it wasn’t like we had a long list of viable alternatives at quarterback. We had no plan B at all.

  What would we have done when the real season began if Drew wasn’t ready? Probably run a lot of handoffs, that’s all.

  Nothing needed to be said out loud by Drew, by Pete Carmichael or by me. We all knew there was work to be done. The healing process wasn’t finished. The problem was we were running short on time.

  Really, what could anybody say? There was still way too much positive energy coming from Drew. It was never a question of “Is the shoulder going to be healthy?” The question for Drew was “What’s the growth potential and how much better will you continue to get?”

  And others were stepping up, especially some of the rookies we’d chosen behind Reggie Bush in the draft. A seventh-round draft pick from Hofstra University named Marques Colston was beginning to shine. Throughout training camp, he got better with every practice. The progress he’d shown had made us comfortable trading the erratic Donté Stallworth to New England. Jahri Evans, our fourth-round selection from Bloomsburg State, was winning a battle to start at right guard. Roman Harper, the second-round selection from Alabama, was doing the same at strong safety. And among the veterans, Deuce McAllister was making real strides. His knee, injured the year before, was really beginning to heal now. What a backfield pair he and Reggie would make! All these players, just like Reggie, would end up being key contributors for us in the years to come. That draft class was spectacular.

  Not by accident, our first two games of the regular season were also being played on the road. The Superdome was in the final month of its overhaul. For the first time, people were saying with confidence that the reopening deadline would be met.

  We opened the regular season in Cleveland, beating the Browns 19-14. Nothing flashy but a win nonetheless. Drew had finally turned the corner. Although he wasn’t 100 percent, there was a huge feeling of relief on the coaching staff, even from Drew himself. I think if you asked him, “At what point in 2006 did you feel 100 percent healthy?” he would tell you, “Shortly after that opening game, in Week Two or Week Three.”

  For the second game of the season, we traveled to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and historic Lambeau Field, one of the best venues anywhere in the sports world. I swear, the whole time I wasn’t thinking, “What if…?” The stadium is nestled in a residential neighborhood, not some anonymous suburb or high-rise downtown. The parking lot smells of bratwurst and barbecue. The fans arrive hours before game time. Friendly tailgating is like a religion there. They’ll say, “Welcome to our stadium. Let us tell you about our traditions.” There’s a warm feeling—to some degree that exists in New Orleans as well. Green Bay is just a unique and special place—one reason I’d kept checking my cell phone in New Orleans that night on my way to dinner with Mickey.

  But despite Green Bay’s tradition and cheerfulness, we still had to worry about Brett Favre and a very good Packers team. We came back from an early deficit and won that game 34-27. It was the first of many comebacks orchestrated by Drew Brees.

  The victory meant something to us. With an outpouring of second-half effort, we’d come from behind to win our second game in a row on the road. Starting out 2-0 after two road games is a big accomplishment for any team in our league. And every bit as important as that final score was that Drew had made two or three throws in that game that reminded Pete Carmichael of the healthy quarterback he knew in San Diego.

  “I’m seeing it,” Pete said.

  Our defense was showing signs of improvement as well. And the results were rolling in. If we could pull out a third victory the following weekend in New Orleans, that would equal the entire sum total of the previous year’s wins.

  16

  WELCOME DOME

  IT WAS ONLY THE biggest game in New Orleans Saints history—a game many people thought would never be played.

  The date was September 25, 2006, not quite thirteen months after Katrina. So much was still up in the air. Would the local economy recover? Would more people move back? Would the levees hold? Could the Superdome ever be a place of celebration again? As the first Saints home game got closer, the answers were as murky as the floodwaters had been.

  But this much was clear: The Dome would be ready. The Falcons would be here. The game would be on Monday Night Football.

  The rivalry with Atlanta went back to the earliest days of the Saints. But the matchup had never been this intense. Both teams were 2-0. Atlanta certainly looked strong. They had just come off a franchise record 306 rushing yards against Tampa Bay. Jim L. Mora—whose dad, Jim Mora, was the most successful coach in Saints history—was coaching the Falcons. They had a talented quarterback named Michael Vick. But we had momentum too. We’d won two games already. If we beat Atlanta, we’d have won as many—one, two, three—as the team had in the entire last season. These Saints were different, and here was early proof. This was the fans’ first chance to get an in-person view of Drew Brees, Reggie Bush and this new team we were building. It was a huge public event in a place that hadn’t been having many of those. For the people of New Orleans, this night was part football game and part recovery pep rally—a chance to tell the world, “Don’t count this team out yet—or this city.” And playing an ESPN Monday Night Football game, we were sure to have a giant national audience.

  And, frankly, I wasn’t sure our players were prepared.

  How could they be? Half our guys had never played in the Dome before. That included all the first- and second-year players. And nobody at all had played in the Dome since its top-to-bottom renovation, a whirlwind $193 million job. The lighting was different. The surface was new. The sound and video systems were now state-of-the-art. This was really a brand-new stadium inside an old shell, and there was no denying that the place was sparkling. But anything so different will take some getting used to. And God only knew what ghosts were lurking there.

  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 aft
er 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.