Payton and Brees, стр. 61
Over the years, various Saints coaches have been assigned get-back duty during games. The unenviable task in recent years fell on the shoulders of coaching assistant Kevin Petry and strength and conditioning coaches Dan Dalrymple, Charles Byrd, and Rob Wenning. In the early days, Saints wide receiver coach Curtis “C.J.” Johnson drew the short straw. He was assigned get-back coach duty in the 2006 NFC Championship against the Bears in Chicago.
“[General manager] Mickey [Loomis] said if Sean runs down to the end zone one more time, C.J., you know him the best, you’ve got to go get him,” Johnson said. “Lo and behold, Reggie Bush makes a long run and the refs call it back and there goes Sean on the field. We’re in Chicago, it’s minus-75 degrees, I’m trying to pull Sean back and getting my butt chewed, ‘You get away from me! Don’t you touch me!’
“With Sean you know what you’re getting. As coaches, I think we’ve all been fired a couple of times in our minds, and that was one of mine. It goes with the territory.”
Lombardi has felt the wrath, as well. As the replay liaison for Payton on game days, he has the unenviable task of advising the head coach on review challenges with the officials. Payton isn’t the most patient soul while awaiting word from Lombardi, who is positioned in the coaches’ box high above the playing field. Lombardi has learned to err on the side of caution in most situations.
“I always say, ‘Sean is the greatest coach to work for—for 349 days a year,” Lombardi quipped.
As wired as Payton is during games, he unwinds pretty quickly afterward and returns to his normal self shortly after the game ends. By the time he addresses the team in the locker room and meets the media for his post-game press conference, he’s usually calmed down. If he’s lashed into someone particularly hard during a game, he often will seek them out and smooth things over.
“He’s so good after the game,” Taysom Hill said. “I think everybody that knows him well enough knows to not take any of his stuff personally. He just gets into the moment. He’s just a fiery, competitive guy.”
Payton’s sideline antics have made him Public Enemy No. 1 for opposing fans. He’s regularly heckled on the road, a tactic he embraces. At the Saints game at CenturyLink Field in 2019, fans brandished signs mocking his role in Bountygate or time as a replacement player during the 1987 labor strike. When Payton jogged off the field after the Saints’ 33–27 win that day, he mockingly applauded the group above the exit tunnel to the locker room and exchanged taunts with them as he left the field.
But in New Orleans, a city that celebrates passion and eccentricity, Payton’s fiery game-day persona is beloved. He’s become a cult hero, especially among the team’s diehard fans, who, after years of suffering ignominious defeats and having proverbial sand kicked in their faces by the 49ers and Falcons, view Payton as their bully savior. Images of his pursed-lipped, icy-eyed glare are popular on T-shirts and Internet avatars across the Crescent City.
Payton, meanwhile, makes no apologies for his behavior. Football is an emotional game, and he wants his players to have an edge on game days. His sideline intensity has set the tone for the Saints throughout his tenure.
“Every one of us has been in a basketball game where you’re on a court and the winners stay and if you lose, you’re done and it’s four deep on who’s waiting,” Payton said. “There’s a good chance if you lose that, unless you want to stick around for an hour and a half, you’re not going to play anymore. And it’s 10–9 and you’re going to 11 and you think about at that moment how you compete because you don’t want to be that guy that gives up the shot [that loses the game]. That last bucket in that pickup game, you had to earn that last bucket. When you get guys caring like that, then you’ve got something there.”
Dome-ination:
2015 New York Giants
November 1, 2015, marked the 49th anniversary of the founding of the New Orleans Saints, and Brees christened All Saints Day with one of the most memorable performances of his career.
Against most teams and most quarterbacks, Eli Manning’s six-touchdown, 350-yard passing day would have been more than enough for victory. It was a career day, one of the best of his storied tenure in New York. In the long, proud history of New York Giants football, only Y.A. Tittle had thrown for as many touchdowns in a single game. And still it wasn’t enough. Because Brees was better.
Brees outdueled Manning and became only the third quarterback in the modern era of the NFL to pass for seven touchdowns as the Saints outlasted the Giants 52–49 in one of the wildest shootouts in NFL history.
How wild?
The teams combined for 101 points, 1,030 yards, and an NFL-record 14 touchdowns. And on the final snap of the back-and-forth shootout, Kai Forbath’s 50-yard goal was the game winner. It was the third-highest- scoring game in NFL history.
The Saints gained 608 yards, the most ever allowed by the Giants in modern NFL history.
Brees (seven) and Manning (six) combined to throw 13 touchdown passes, the most in a single game in NFL history.
For the Saints, it was the second-most points and third-most yards they’d amassed in club history. And they needed every one of them to secure the win.
The Saints had six touchdown drives of 80 or more yards and scored 10 points in the final 41 seconds.
“I’ve never been a part of something like that,” said Brees, who completed a team-record 40 of 50 passes for a career-high and Saints-record 511 yards.
The Saints and Giants combined to average 7.3 yards per play. Of the 141 combined offensive snaps, only seven resulted in