Home Team

by Sean Payton

  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.

  35

  TROPHY TIME

  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 sai
d: “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.

  There were all these people I saw every day—people I’d have invited to my wedding if I had known them then—all looking like they’d just been delivered to somewhere they never imagined they’d be. The head trainer, Scottie Patton. The equipment guy.

  There was one little orange cooler of Michelob Ultra in the locker room. Maybe there were thirty-five beers in there. I showered, dumped the sticky sweatshirt and put on my suit. Finally it was time to make our way to the hotel, where I knew we had a great victory party waiting for us. Someone grabbed the little cooler. I had the trophy. We headed outside to the parking lot. Our four usual buses were ready to go.

  As always, I got on Bus One. I was in what would be seat 1A, first row by the window. Joe Vitt sat next to me. Brees was right behind us. Greg McMahon, Joe Lombardi, the other coaches and players—all of them sat where they always did. Bus Two had its group, Bus Three and so on.

  That little orange cooler was in the aisle. The beers were passed from row to row. You could hear the caps twisting off the bottles. I think I smelled cigar smoke coming from the back. Almost immediately, the bus was whizzing down the highway toward the Intercontinental.

  It got quiet in there. It felt almost like that scene in The Shawshank Redemption in which the prisoners are all together for what they are certain is the very last time. It’s not so different for a football team that has just won the Super Bowl.

  When you’re at the Super Bowl, you get the presidential-level police escort. The traffic was pushed entirely over to the right-hand side of the road. The cars were totally stopped as we passed. We were the only traffic.

  It was just me and my guys after winning the Super Bowl, heading back to our hotel.

  The bus ride was almost silent. Guys were talking, but softly. We had our beers. We had our victory. We had one another. We had nothing to prove and nowhere unpleasant to go.

  I had no film to grade. No injury reports to review. No game plan to tease out for next Sunday. We had set a goal for ourselves, and we had reached it together. We had been lifted by our city, and we had lifted it too. What else could anybody want?

  As we rode, the people in the stopped cars seemed to understand all of this. At least I think they did. They didn’t seem to mind at all. We had been the tragic Saints from tragic New Orleans, but neither of us was tragic anymore.

  Horns were blowing. There were sirens in the distance. Some people were leaning from their car windows to get a better view. Others got out entirely. A few were standing on their trunks or their hoods.

  I can’t prove this, but I’ll bet I’m right. Seventy-five percent of those people were Saints fans. South Florida had become part of Saints Country. Our story seemed to have captivated people everywhere. They were screaming. They were clapping. They were waving at us.

  As we rolled along, Joe Vitt looked over at me in my seat. We started listing all the thing we didn’t have to do.

  “No depth charts,” he said.

  “No injury reports,” I followed.

  There was only one thing we both agreed we didn’t like: This bus was moving much too quickly. This ride wouldn’t last nearly long enough.

  My mind went back to the
night we took the long way home from Dallas after beating the Cowboys. I wondered if we still had time to arrange something like that.

  “This is our reward,” Vitt said. “This fuckin’ ride.”

  “I know what you mean,” I told him. “I wish we were sitting in traffic like those other people. This ride can’t possibly last long enough. I could go through the rest of the night.”

  36

  MARCHING IN

  IT WAS ELEVEN FORTY-FIVE by the time we got back to the Intercontinental. Was there any doubt we were going to celebrate?

  Mr. Benson paid for one hell of a party. Better Than Ezra played. Kenny Chesney came on at three in the morning. The liquor flowed. Champagne was finally poured. Even after a very tough football game, players found the energy to dance. There was lots of hugging and lots of “I love you, man.” Basically, we were up all night.

  And why not? There was no next game to worry about. And God knows, we’d waited long enough for this. Four years since I had gotten to New Orleans—forty-two years, five months and eighteen days since John Gilliam’s opening run. Not that anyone was counting. No, it wasn’t easy. And yes, we got it done. In the days to come, the players and coaches would be scattered everywhere. No one could say for certain how many of them would be back the following year. That’s just the reality of professional sports today. No team is forever. Each year is a whole new bet. As we toasted the team, the city and ourselves, we knew we still had some celebrating in front of us. No one seemed eager to call it an early night.

  About five fifteen on Monday morning, just as the February sun was rising over the Atlantic Ocean, the party was finally winding down. The players and the coaches wandered into the morning for a long, well-deserved rest. Which was nice for them, I’m sure. I wasn’t so lucky. Long before the game was played, the NFL had scheduled an eight thirty a.m. press conference so the national media could question the winning Super Bowl coach. Did I mention this press conference was scheduled for eight thirty a.m.? The idea, I guess, was to have the Q&A before the media all left town.