Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

At Super Bowl XLIV, the Saints couldn’t stop being the Saints. Like the city, the team came back.

MIAMI — The New Orleans Saints were never going to win this one straight up. But really, nothing out of New Orleans ever comes at you like a fastball.

Peyton Manning and his robotic Colts offence? They might have been able to win a cold-blooded Super Bowl, executed sans emotion. Like a shuttle launch.

But not the Saints — they’ve got style, and have made their bones on turnovers all year long.

They were always going to need a little voodoo. A little New Orleans jazz.

So they trotted out a reverse, and it didn’t work. They went for it on fourth and goal from 1 ½ yards out. Didn’t work.

The Saints were, as Reggie Bush said, "doing it for a city that needed something like this." So they weren’t about to quit on the plan, because New Orleans never quits on a plan.

As a city, New Orleans never stopped being New Orleans.

Come floods, come utter desolation, they put their town back together. The first thing New Orleans did was push away the debris to open up the French Quarter. Because the French Quarter is New Orleans, and when the levy breaks, pretty soon after you’re going to need a good strong drink.

So they opened for business, struck up the band, and next thing you knew New Orleans was putting a strand of beads around your neck and pouring you a Hurricane.

That’s why, at Super Bowl XLIV, the Saints couldn’t stop being the Saints. "We’re going to be who we are," said defensive coordinator Gregg Williams afterwards.

Head coach Sean Payton sashayed into the locker room at halftime, and had an entire concert by The Who to talk himself out of that short kickoff they opened the second half with. But like the Who Dat Nation, he wouldn’t budge.

He couldn’t budge.

"He told me with 20 minutes to go in the halftime," said kicker Thomas Morstead. "I wish he would have told me at the end."

A short kickoff is a crap shoot, and Morstead executed as well as a kicker can. He kept the dice on the table so a teammate could have the chance to convert the gamble.

"I told the guys at halftime, ‘You’ve got to make me look right here,’" Payton said of the call. "We knew we were going to call it at some point."

Who goes into a Super Bowl game "knowing" that they are going to try a short kick? The New Orleans Saints, that’s who.

Slowly the karma gathered, and the rewards began to roll in. Linebacker Jonathan Cassilas wrestled away that ball at the bottom of a 12-man pile that took the officials a full minute to strip down. A touchdown soon followed, like a beer chaser after a bourbon shot.

Later on there was a review on a two-point conversion that went New Orleans’ way. It could have gone either way, but it didn’t.

The Saints had turned this thing, and everyone knew it. When they took that seven point lead with less than six minutes to play, the realization was now coursing through the veins of 75,000 people:

The Fleur de Lis had the mojo in this thing. They weren’t just Peyton’s opponent anymore.

"Four years ago, whoever thought this would be happening," said quarterback Drew Brees, who was patiently dramatic, building a 32-for-39 day with a performance that got stronger as the game got older. "I mean, 85% of the city was under water. People were evacuated all over the country. People wondered if the city would come back. If the organization would come back…"

They brought Brees in from San Diego. They moved their operation to Baton Rouge and San Antonio while the Superdome was being rebuilt during the 2005 season. They came back in ’06, and started their own rebuild in the same building where Katrina victims had met their maker.

"We just all looked at one another and said, ‘We’re going to rebuild together. We’ll lean on each other,’" Brees said. "This is the culmination of that."

And before it was done, the turnover that had been the lifeblood of this Saints team arrived. Late, but not too late.

There was but one turnover in the entirety of Super Bowl XLIV. It was the one that brought the Super Bowl to New Orleans; the biggest turnover in a franchise and a city that knows a little bit about turnovers and turnarounds.

Tracy Porter squatted on a route by Reggie Wayne, and Mr. Perfect himself — Peyton Manning — bit as hard as a quarterback has ever bit on a moment of this magnitude.

"When I saw my blockers in front of me and only Peyton and the offensive lineman left," said Porter, "I cut back in and ran it."

He ran it, all right. All the way to the first Super Bowl victory in the sorry history of the team from the Big Easy.

When it was over, won 31-17, they couldn’t wait to get back to Bourbon St.

"We love you guys," said Bush, who was all-world in this game. "We’re going to be home soon, and we’re going to party like we’re supposed to."