Home Team (27 page)

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.”

It was important because Jabari was able to get back on the field. He ended up making a few plays for us. We just did enough to bleed the clock out. Even on fourth down, they went incomplete to Reggie Wayne on our four. There was still this guarded feeling. How much time’s left? How many time-outs do they have?

I looked up, and Joe Vitt was coming toward me. I’m saying, “Back up. Back it up.”

He gave me a look.

“I’m just trying to hug you,” he said. “You’re a world champion.”

It was only then it dawned on me. “Hey, we can take the knee.”

We’d just won the Super Bowl.

JEFF CHARLESTON AND BOBBY
McCray were the ones who dumped the Gatorade on my head.

I’m not sure how the two defensive ends drew that particular assignment, drenching their head coach with a cooler full of sticky green liquid with ice floating in it. But there’s a sudden shock at the temperature change when the ice-cold sports drink hits the back of your neck, then slides across your shoulder and collarbone and runs past your rib cage and belly all the way down to your waist.

I hate to grumble about anything at a time of such triumph. But damn, that stung!

This tradition, dumping Gatorade on the head of the winning coach, goes back to the mid-1980s and the New York Giants—Bill Parcells’s New York Giants. Hey, not everything with Parcells’s name on it is necessarily good.

I grabbed Greg McMahon. I hugged Deuce McAllister. I exchanged a “Yes!” with Pierre Thomas. All of a sudden, I was being swarmed by what seemed like a hundred reporters and cameramen, each one assigned to get a different kind of quote, sound bite or B roll—and get it very fast. That’s not easy in such a tight crowd. I had a chance to congratulate Colts head coach Jim Caldwell for the season his team had had. He was very gracious. He’s someone I certainly have a lot of respect for.

At that point, everything became a little blurry.

Players were coming up, coaches, league officials. “Congratulations,” they said.

“You did it.”

“Man, that kick was amazing.”

“Where’s Beth?” I asked the NFL security guy who was assigned to me. I had a thought: “In all this mayhem, I’m not gonna find my family.” I knew my wife was headed down to the field. I knew our kids would be with her. But would they be able to find me in this mob?

It didn’t take long.

I hugged Beth. I squeezed her. I held her very tightly. She started crying. So did I. Meghan and Connor were hugging us both at waist level and jumping up and down. This was the first time we had been together since right before the game, when we four Paytons had put our hands together and done a little break and a fist pump. From that to this.

“I’m getting Gatorade all over Beth’s clothes,” I thought. Actually, Connor was even messier. He had his hat on backward, and the sticky stuff was all over him now. Meghan was standing beside him with her broken arm. It was awesome.

“I love you,” I said to Beth, mouthing the words slowly so she could read my lips above the noise.

“I love you,” she said.

It’s funny what you remember from times like this. You know how every once in a while when you hug someone you love, you lift that person an inch or two off the ground? I remember that Beth was up five or six inches with her back arched. It’s like an exclamation point on whatever you’re feeling when you do that. That’s a hug you might give every four years.

The stage with the podium seemed very tiny when the security guy led me up there. Beth and the kids came up for a moment, but they couldn’t stay. Drew was there, and Mickey and Mr. Benson, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Jim Nantz from CBS Sports. A couple other people could have fit up there, but not too many. Maybe fifteen or sixteen altogether, no more.

That bothered me. It isolated people at a moment when we all should have been celebrating together the very essence of team sport.

“You got the Gatorade bath?” Brees asked me after tapping my wet black zippered Saints sweatshirt. I don’t think he really had to ask. “Hey, we’re champions.”

“Super Bowl champions,” I corrected. “And you’re the MVP.”

It wasn’t the words that made the moment special. It was the feeling, just being there—and being there with him.

Now it was trophy time.

As he carried the Vince Lombardi Trophy across the crowded field toward the elevated stage, NFL Hall of Famer Len Dawson was nearly swallowed in a sea of white Saints jerseys and outstretched black-gloved hands. The players all wanted to touch the sterling-silver football. Their helmets were off now, and many of the players wore white caps emblazoned with SUPER BOWL XLIV CHAMPIONS. From the stage I could see the players patting, fondling and rubbing the trophy as Dawson carried it toward us. Everyone was acting like that trophy had the magic powers of some voodoo charm. Who knows? Maybe it did.

I was still wet, although now I had a white Saints towel around my neck, soaking up some of the Gatorade. The falling confetti was beginning to cloud my view.

When I was growing up in the Midwest, every once in a while we’d have one of those snowstorms with very little wind and flakes so thick it was hard to see the neighbors’ houses. You knew you’d have a foot and a half on the ground tomorrow. That’s how much confetti there was.

Jim Nantz handed Commissioner Goodell the microphone. Mr. Benson was holding the trophy now.

“Tonight,” the commissioner said, “the two best teams in the NFL played another classic game. Congratulations to both teams. Tonight, the Super Bowl belongs to the city of New Orleans, their great fans.”

A deafening roar went up in Sun Life Stadium.

“Tom,” he said to Mr. Benson, “to you, to Sean and to your incredible team, the hope, courage and inspiration you provide your community is inspiring. So thank you so much. Congratulations. You’re Super Bowl champs.”

Short, sweet and very, very nice.

Nantz took over from there. “Mr. Benson,” he asked, “how can you possibly put this into words, what this night means to you and the city of New Orleans?”

“Well, I tell you,” the owner said, “and not only this city but this whole state. And, Louisiana, by the way, New Orleans is back. And we showed the whole world. We’re back. We’re back. The whole world.”

The way Mr. Benson began waving the trophy, Nantz looked momentarily alarmed. “Be careful,” the sportscaster said. Then he continued. “I know nothing delights you more than being able to turn that trophy over to your head coach, Sean Payton.”

“I think I could kiss him,” Mr. Benson said.

We settled for a hug.

I took the trophy from Mr. Benson. I held it high over my head. Then, with three strong arm thrusts, I pumped it into the air. I could hear people roaring with every thrust.

People were cheering. Confetti was swirling. Over my right shoulder, I could hear Drew’s laughter.

“Sean,” Nantz went on, “you gotta tell us, your team was down ten to nothing after the first quarter. And then you had some of the gutsiest calls—my partner Phil Simms talked about it—we’ve ever seen by any head coach in a Super Bowl. That obviously was born out of a lot of faith in this team. How did you do it?”

“Well, we talked about it at halftime. It’s really a credit to every one of these players here. There is not enough room on this stage for all of them. But they carried out the plan. I’m proud of this team, the coaching staff. And everybody back in New Orleans gets a piece of this trophy. Here we go.”

Drew stepped forward, and Nantz continued.

“And to think that four years ago,” the sportscaster said to me, “you came in. You brought this quarterback over from San Diego named Drew Brees.”

Before the presentation began, I had asked Nantz if it would be OK if I gave Drew the trophy. He’d said sure. “It’s time for you to pull off the handoff,” Nantz said to me.

I did the honors. I said: “I want to hand off this trophy to the MVP of the Super Bowl, the MVP of our league, Drew Brees. Here you go.”

I handed him the Lombardi. Drew and I shared a hug. He kissed the silver football. He too held the trophy high.

“How did you guys pull off this comeback?” Nantz asked him.

I love what Drew said. “We just believed in ourselves. We knew that we had an entire city, maybe an entire country behind us. What can I say? I tried to imagine what this moment would be like for a long time, and it’s better than I expected. But God is great. We got the best ownership family in the league, the best head coach, best general manager, best team. And we proved that tonight.”

The MVP on top of it, Nantz added.

“Just feeling like it was all meant to be. It’s all destiny. What can I say? The birth of my son, as well, the first year of his life. Win a Super Bowl championship. He’s been my inspiration as well. So it doesn’t get any better than that.”

“Congratulations, Drew,” Nantz said.

“Thank you,” the quarterback said. “Mardi Gras may never end.”

We made our way off the stage and back onto the field. By this point, all I could see were white jerseys. There was Jon Vilma and Anthony Hargrove. So many players, so many coaches, so many people I cared about, not nearly enough time.

You know what it was like? It was like being at your own wedding. There were so many people you wanted to visit with—all these people who had meant so much in your life. And I couldn’t spend any time with any of them. I was thinking, “Isn’t there some way we can stretch this thing out?” I knew that at five a.m. I’d be asking, “What just happened? Who was there? Did I talk to anyone?”

I saw Jeremy Shockey and his mother. He’d scored a touchdown in the game. I remember hugging his mother and just seeing the look on Jeremy’s face. Jeremy is someone who is close to maybe four people in his life. When I first signed him, I had him up in my office. I told him to draw a big circle and put in the circle the people who he loved without question. Who did he trust and love hands-down? He wrote down his mother and his brother. He wrote Mike Pope, who was a close friend and coach of his. That day, I told him, “I want to be in that circle.”

When I saw him on the field with his mom, that conversation came right back to me. “Thanks for letting me in your circle,” I said to him.

I saw Reggie Bush with his girlfriend, Kim, and her mother. I hugged Reggie—he’s heavier than Beth is—and lifted him an inch or two off the ground.

“Thank you, thank you—I didn’t know at first,” Reggie said. “God had a plan, and I just needed you to help me see it.”

I wanted to take the trophy back to the locker room. I was eager to get out of that sticky sweatshirt, and most of the players were already heading back there. But Drew and I had to do a few quick interviews. The NFL security guy led us to a golf cart, which whisked us to the media tent. Each of us answered a few questions and then it was on to the locker room.

The feeling in there was absolutely amazing. The catering left something to be desired.

On Tuesday I had told Mike Ornstein I wanted champagne in the locker room, which is actually against NFL rules. Over the years, champagne celebrations had given way to confetti. Gatorade was introduced. At some point, players started pulling Super Bowl Champion T-shirts over their shoulder pads. I’ve never been a fan of that.

So customs had changed, but we’d all grown up with a certain image in our heads. Red Auerbach, Mike Ditka—when they won something special, they celebrated, really celebrated, with shaken bottles of champagne. Were we really going to win the Super Bowl without a proper locker room toast? Weren’t we the
New Orleans
Saints?

“We’re good with the champagne, right?” I had asked Ornstein several times during the week. “It’s gonna be cold, right? I’m ready to pay the fine.” I couldn’t have been clearer. “I don’t want warm champagne. And I want enough so that we can drink it and squirt each other with it. I want champagne.”

Well, I guess he spoke to Mickey about it, and Mickey said, “Listen, I don’t know.” And the two of them proceeded to “yes” me the rest of the week.

“Oh, yeah,” Ornstein said.

“Oh, yeah,” Mickey agreed.

I got back to the locker room with the trophy, and there was no champagne. Ornstein had failed me. He will never hear the end of this.

Most of the players got there before I did. Some had already showered. Some hadn’t. They were in various stages of semi-dress, shouting and congratulating one another. “I love you, man,” they said over and over again. They were laughing and pushing and shoving the way only football players do. I hugged Dan Simmons, our equipment guy, who’s been with the Saints for forty-three years—longer than Mr. Benson, longer than anyone. He had a Super Bowl win now.