Saints sure aren’t acting like an underdog with Super Bowl XLIV approaching

MIAMI — Maybe it’s karma, that Vince Lombardi’s grandson, Joe Lombardi, is the New Orleans Saints’ quarterbacks coach.

Maybe it’s the experience of the 2006-07 NFL season, when the Saints defied the odds in Sean Payton’s first season in New Orleans, only to fall one game short of the first Super Bowl berth in club history.

Maybe it’s Payton and Drew Brees and Scott Shanle and Will Smith. The tough inside running of Pierre Thomas and Mike Bell. For some reason, the notion that Brees and Payton will hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy on Sunday night at Sun Life Stadium seems like a natural conclusion to a “season of firsts,” as Payton likes to call it.

Then again, nobody fights the karma.

“The chance to be a part of a Super Bowl winning team is huge,” Joe Lombardi told The Times-Picayune’s Jimmy Smith on Tuesday, “And then there’s a little personal story that makes it a little more special.”

Uh, yeah. Anyone who was alive when the late, great Vince Lombardi did his thing on the Green Bay Packers sideline can understand. The
charismatic, gap-toothed coach, one of the reasons pro football became
so popular about 40 years ago, was one of the “Seven Blocks of Granite”
during his playing days at Fordham University. He was a tough, demanding coach. He suffered no fools.

The Saints will face Peyton Manning and the resourceful Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV.
They’re the underdog, but they sure aren’t acting like it. They’re
loose, they have a strong sense of focus. There is an air of confidence.

The Saints look like a team that belongs in the
Super Bowl, their lack of history in the big game notwithstanding. And
that starts with Payton, the team’s fourth-year coach, and Brees, the
undersized but driven quarterback who changed the culture of pro
football in New Orleans
with one stroke of the pen four years ago. All you need to know is that
10 months after Brees joined the Saints, they played in the NFC
championship game, a team that helped New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf South to turn the page on deadly Hurricane Katrina.

The Saints lost that game at Soldier Field, but you had the feeling they’d be back. Someday.

That someday is here.

“For me, as a quarterback, and as a guy who is very
competitive, I’m in this league to win championships,” Brees said
Tuesday during Super Bowl Media Day. “I don’t see any reason why you
would want to play this game. You play this game to be the best. You
play this game to win championships, especially at the quarterback
position. You are measured by wins and losses. You are measured by
championships.

“And we have no greater opportunity than this week to have that chance.”

Opportunity. To paraphrase Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the Saints hear it knocking, on the window. On the door. On Sunday.

The Saints won 13 consecutive games before an inspired comeback fell short on Dec. 19, in a 24-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in the Louisiana Superdome.
They survived the Tampa Bay meltdown the next week and the meaningless
game at Carolina, and they came back with a vengeance. They drop-kicked Kurt Warner and the Arizona Cardinals into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned five turnovers, including a Brett Favre interception late in regulation, into a 31-28 overtime victory over the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game.

And the French Quarter went nuts.

Imagine if the Saints haul a Vince Lombardi Trophy back to Poydras Street early Monday morning. New Orleans might have to take the whole day off.

“One thing we were able to do was handle some of the setbacks,” Sean Payton said. “We played from behind, we played with a lead. As the season
unfolded, I liked the way we responded. You develop a vision. Our
players felt that.”

They’re feeling it in South Florida, too.

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