Payton and Brees, стр. 8

of its rich immigrant history. In nearly every way, culturally, spiritually, and philosophically, New Orleans is much closer to Toulouse, France, than Talladega, Alabama. But in one aspect, New Orleans is very much a Southern city: its people are religious about football.

A unique American city like New Orleans needs a unique football team, and the Saints certainly fit the bill. Everything about the Saints is distinctive. Their black-and-gold color scheme, a tribute to founding owner John Mecom Jr.’s oil business interests (black gold, Texas tea), is unique in professional sports. Their nickname, derived from New Orleans jazz great Louis Armstrong’s song “When the Saints Go Marching In,” is also distinctive, a nod to the city’s deep Catholic roots. And their fleur-de-lis logo is also the city of New Orleans’ symbol.

Located on a sliver of sinking, mosquito-infested silt in the middle of a swamp, New Orleans’ very existence grows more precarious by the day. Coastal erosion claims a football field of Louisiana land to the Gulf of Mexico each day. To cope with this inconvenient truth, New Orleanians lean on certain customs: Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, drive-thru daiquiri shops—and the Saints.

Few teams have such intrinsic ties to their hometown, both spiritually and aesthetically. The relationship between the city and team extends beyond the normal team/community dynamic.

For the team’s fans, affectionately known as Who Dats after the colloquial chant “Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints,” Saints games are more than mere athletic contests. They are communal events, three-hour revivals where all races, religions, and creeds of the citizenry converge, rally, and unite. New Orleanians attend games dressed in costume and Carnival regalia. They name their children after Saints players and regularly meet the team at the airport after its return flights from big road wins.

If something bad happens to a Saints player, the city rallies to the cause. When linebacker Steve Stonebreaker was fined $1,000 for starting a fight in a game against the New York Giants in 1967, a group of fans collected money to pay the fine. When Marcus Williams missed the tackle at the end of the 2017 NFC divisional playoff game, a local couple bought a billboard downtown with the message: Dat’s OK Marcus, We [big pink heart] our Saints.

And this love affair has existed since the franchise’s inception in 1966.

Unfortunately, the on-field product wasn’t as impressive as the off-field support during the club’s early years.

It took the Saints two decades to record their first winning season and another 13 years after that to win their first playoff game. Owner Tom Benson had raised the standards of the club when he bought the team in 1985 and hired general manager Jim Finks and head coach Jim Mora. But the Saints still were considered one of the league’s also-rans. Before Payton arrived, they had registered only seven winning seasons and a record of 244–361–5 in 39 years. Of Payton’s 13 predecessors, only Mora managed to post a winning record in New Orleans.

Before Payton left his position as Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator to take the Saints gig, his mentor, Bill Parcells, offered him some final advice: “It was, ‘Hey, real quickly, you’ve got to figure out what has kept that organization from winning and make those changes,” Payton said. “Otherwise, they’ll be having another press conference three years from now to introduce another someone in a navy blazer at the podium.”

Payton said Parcells compared him and his rookie coaching brethren to penguins jumping off an iceberg into the dangerous Arctic waters.

“There’s nine of you in that class,” Payton recalled Parcells’ message to him. “Everyone is swimming for the iceberg and the truth of the matter is maybe two or three of you will get to that other iceberg and climb up [and] the rest are eaten. Because typically those [coaching] changes are going on at those places that haven’t experienced success.”

While Payton respected Parcells and other Super Bowl–winning mentors like Jon Gruden and Mike Ditka, he also knew nothing they said could truly prepare him for the challenge he faced in New Orleans.

When Payton took over the Saints in January 2006, New Orleans was only five months removed from Hurricane Katrina’s devastation and still in the early stages of the massive recovery. In the wake of one of the worst natural disasters in American history, the long-term future of the Saints was uncertain, as were New Orleans’ prospects as a regular host site for Super Bowls, Final Fours, and college football championship games.

Even before Katrina, New Orleans already was one of the smallest and poorest markets to boast two professional sports franchises. Its metropolitan population of 1.3 million was the fifth smallest in the NFL. Its corporate base ranked ahead of only Buffalo. Saints season-ticket sales had dipped to about 35,000 before Katrina, down more than 33 percent from a franchise record of more than 53,000 in 2003. And it didn’t help matters that the 2005 team finished 3–13, the club’s worst record since Coach Mike Ditka’s swan song in 1999.

This was the bleak situation that confronted Payton early in his tenure. During his first month on the job while holed up at the Airport Hilton Hotel on Airline Drive, a few miles down the road from Saints headquarters in suburban Kenner, Payton noticed the looks on the faces of assistant coaches he brought in for interviews. The hotel was surrounded by FEMA trailers, blue roofs, and construction equipment. The area’s quality of life was not exactly a selling point to the spouses of potential coaching candidates.

“Everyone else was going out [of New Orleans],” Payton said, “and we were going in.”

At his introductory press conference, Payton vowed to start “with a clean slate.” Not only did the entire football operation need an overhaul, but the business side of the building also needed to be changed. The Superdome, meanwhile, was in the initial stages of a multi-phase $320 million renovation. For all intents and purposes, the Saints team that Payton and Brees took over in 2006 was a start-up