‘It really happened’: Brees, Payton, New Orleans celebrate Super win
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| Saints head coach Sean Payton celebrates with the Vince Lombardi Trophy on Sunday after New Orleans’ 31-17 win over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. (AP) |
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Wearing Mardi Gras beads and clearly exhausted from a late night of post-Super Bowl celebrations, Sean Payton leaned on a podium, clutching the Vince Lombardi trophy in his right hand.
“You can’t get enough of this,” the Saints’ head coach said at a news conference at the Fort Lauderdale convention center Monday morning. “This thing lay in my bed next to me last night, rolled over it a couple times. I probably drooled on it. But man, there’s nothing like it.”
Certainly, the New Orleans Saints never experienced anything like it.
Before this one, the Saints had only eight winning seasons – and two playoff victories – in their previous 42 years combined. New Orleans had to win three postseason games against three great quarterbacks – Kurt Warner, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning – to win the title this season.
The last quarterback standing was Drew Brees, who joined Payton in 2006 with the idea of transforming the Saints into champions for a region needing widespread rebuilding after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
That was easier said than done, but in their fourth season together, they did it. Brees was chosen the Super Bowl MVP after Sunday night’s 31-17 victory over the Indianapolis Colts. After that, his only remaining challenge was believing he’d actually pulled it off.
“I had to wake up this morning and turn to my wife and say, ‘Did yesterday really happen?’” Brees said.
“Our victory last night was the culmination of four years of hard work, fighting through a lot of adversity, ups and downs and more importantly than that, representing a city that has been through so much,” Brees said.
“Along the way, people have asked me so many times, ‘Do you look at it as a burden or extra pressure? Do you feel like you’re carrying the weight of the city on your teams’ shoulders.’ I said, ‘No, not at all. We look at it as a responsibility.’ Our city, our fans, gave us strength and we owe this to them.”
Payton said when all was quiet in the team hotel around 3 a.m., he offered a prayer of thanks for his team and his experience in New Orleans, where he became a head coach for the first time in 2006. The city was still largely in ruin then.
“When we got into coaching or playing, we got into it for certain reasons and yet the reasons in New Orleans far exceeded what we ever expected,” Payton said.
The theme for the Saints in 2009 became: A season of firsts. They opened with their first 13-game winning streak, which earned them a first No. 1 seeding in the NFC playoffs. That led to a first home NFC title game, then a first Super Bowl.
Their run to the Super Bowl captured the attention of football fans everywhere. The game was watched by more than 106 million people, surpassing the 1983 finale of “M-A-S-H” to become the most-watched program in U.S. television history, the Nielsen Co. said Monday.
Commissioner Roger Goodell called this Super Bowl “clearly more than a game.”
Throughout the past week, Brees used the Super Bowl as a platform to promote New Orleans’ recovery and express his adoration for the distinctive and historic city. After the Saints’ Super Bowl triumph, Brees agreed to appear on the Late Show with David Letterman on Monday night.
“We’re going to enjoy this for a while. I think New Orleans is enjoying it right this second, still,” Brees said. “We don’t expect anybody to go to work today in New Orleans, or maybe for the next two weeks considering Mardi Gras is next week.”
