Rebroadcast of Saints’ homecoming provides distraction and hope

Everybody was ready for some football.

A Monday night party.

So on Monday night, ESPN obliged by re-airing the Sept. 25, 2006 Monday Night Football game between the Saints and the Atlanta Falcons on the occasion of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome reopening 13 months after Hurricane Katrina.

Saints owner Gayle Benson suggested fans wear black and gold for the occasion even though they couldn’t gather at the Dome or anywhere else other than their individual homes to watch.

The Saints media relations department sent pre-game and post-game information to reporters to help them cover a nearly 14-year-old event to help fill the void left by a complete absence of new events.

The Saints staff even poked a little good-natured fun at their most bitter rivals by referencing the 28-3 lead the Falcons notoriously blew in losing to New England in Super Bowl LI alongside the 23-3 score by which New Orleans beat Atlanta in the Dome reopening.

The rebroadcast was the second in a series of memorable MNF games that ESPN plans to air to fill some of the holes in its schedule and satisfy viewers’ thirst for some sort of sports-related entertainment amid the COVID-19 Pandemic.

There are other memorable sporting events being rebroadcast on ESPN and other networks, but this game was the one most appropriate under these unprecedented circumstances.

The game was the first event inside the Superdome since a Saints preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens just three days before Katrina ripped across the Gulf Coast, tearing open the roof of the Dome, overwhelming the faulty levees and causing 80 percent of New Orleans to become submerged.

Initially there was disagreement over whether the Dome should be repaired, whether New Orleans itself should be saved.

In a matter of a few days life was turned inside out and no one knew when or even if it would return to normal. That abnormality, which was confined to a small area of the Gulf Coast, is reminiscent of the one currently being experienced across the entire globe.

When the Saints returned from a displaced 2005 season that saw them headquartered in San Antonio and playing home games there was well as in Baton Rouge and even East Rutherford, N.J., things weren’t back to normal.

Some parts of the metropolitan area were no closer to recovery than they were the day after Katrina struck. But the city was functioning, many people had returned from their individual displacements and the Dome was open.

The game against the Falcons was an opportunity to show the country that although New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still had a long way to go the area already had come a very long way.

It was also a celebration for the people who had done the heavy lifting in bringing the city back and still managed to scrape together enough money to sell out the Dome on season tickets for the first time.

It was an opportunity for them to get a first-hand look at their rebuilt football team, which had won its first two games in Cleveland and Green Bay while the final touches were being put on the Dome.

The ability to put on an NFL game in the Dome was a watershed moment in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. As we await similar watershed moments in the recovery from this crisis that can’t yet be seen on the horizon, it was a good moment to relive.

* * *

The build-up to the game and the broadcast wasn’t much different than that of a Super Bowl. U2 and Green Day put on a pre-game concert at which Green Day debuted a song called “The Saints Are Coming,” written specifically for the occasion and which remains a pre-game staple at the Dome.

The buzz inside the stadium leading up to and at kickoff was unprecedented for a regular-season game.

Less than 90 seconds into the game the Falcons lined up to punt from their 29-yard line. Steve Gleason zipped through a seam in the interior of the Falcons’ line and blocked Michael Koenen’s punt. The ball rolled to the South goal line and Curtis DeLoatch fell on it and into the end zone for a Saints touchdown and suddenly all was right with the world.

In my experience in covering a couple hundred Saints games in the Dome, the only decibel level comparable to the crowd’s thunderous reaction to the blocked punt was the one that would come three seasons later when Garrett Hartley kicked an overtime field goal that sent New Orleans to the Super Bowl.

Falcons coach Jimmy Mora, a former Saints assistant, would say after the game that his team never had a chance under the circumstances. It wasn’t an excuse for his team’s play, just an honest acknowledgement of the reality that this was New Orleans’ night and no football team was capable of changing that.

If Atlanta did have any small hope of going into the game it vanished with that touchdown, although the Falcons did recover well enough to drive to a first-quarter field goal.

But shortly before halftime the Saints drove into the Falcons’ red zone. They had worked all week on a special play for the occasion called “the Superdome Special.” An injury timeout provided an opportunity for head coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees to determine that this was the right moment for the play that Payton later called “a classic double reverse.”

Brees handed the ball to rookie running back Reggie Bush on an apparent sweep left and Bush handed to former LSU wide receiver Devery Henderson going the other way for an 11-yard touchdown as Brees threw a key block.

The play gave the Saints a 14-3 lead late in the second quarter and put them in command of a game in which they wouldn’t allow another point.

Now, let’s pause to put some of this stuff into context. Remember this was nearly 14 years ago.

It was Payton’s third game as a head coach. No one knew exactly what the Saints had in the guy who would go on to become the most successful head coach in franchise history and the second-longest tenured coach in the NFL as of today

We got a hint of what had led then-owner Tom Benson and general manager Mickey Loomis to hire the Cowboys assistant the next day when Payton held the traditional day-after-game news conference.

Nowadays these things are done by conference call, but back then it was a full-blown face-to-face news conference.

Payton was asked about Henderson’s touchdown and gave a lengthy and remarkably detailed explanation of everything that went into the play. His explanation seemed to last a good 15 minutes, though in reality it probably was just a few minutes.

The Saints had been saving the play for precisely the right opportunity. They wanted to run it from the hashmark rather than the middle of the field.

The ball was spotted at the right hashmark for the touchdown play and the injury timeout was vital in providing sufficient time to evaluate the circumstances, which included the sudden absence of Atlanta star cornerback DeAngelo Hall, who suffered a calf injury on the previous play.

Payton went on to explain that there had been a days-long series of discussions as to whether they should hand the ball to Henderson or pitch it to him. Henderson had vacillated on which he felt more comfortable with. At lunch on gameday Henderson had said he’d prefer a pitch but Payton wasn’t comfortable with the lack of conviction in his answer.

Finally during the timeout all the principals were comfortable with running the play right then and there and handing the ball to Henderson. Like everything else on that night it was executed nearly flawlessly.

As Payton finished his explanation the next day, I couldn’t help but think that no Saints head coach ever had put that much thought and attention to detail into anything in the history of the franchise.

Just as that game and that season were an indication that Payton was a Saints head coach unlike any other, so too was that game and that season an indication that the franchise as a whole was entering an unprecedented era of success as it took its first steps out of its darkest time.

That kind of reminder comes in handy during these dark days.

The Saints had never been to the NFC Championship before going that season and they have made two subsequent trips.

Brees was a young quarterback with a suspect shoulder who has now thrown for more yards and touchdowns that any other player in NFL history as he awaits his 20th NFL season.

And then there’s Gleason – the special teamer who made one of the most iconic plays in Saints history which is just one entry on a life resume that has made him one of the most iconic New Orleanians.

Now there is a statue called “Rebirth” outside the Dome commemorating the blocked punt and a display capturing the moment in the Saints Hall of Fame Museum.

But less than five years after that moment, Gleason was diagnosed with ALS, which was supposed to limit his life to another two to four years. But Gleason had too much stuff he needed to accomplish to fit it into such a small time period so he extended it to nine years and counting.

He has become a champion for research and treatment of ALS, much of it done from the wheelchair that he has occupied for the last several years. Gleason received the Congressional Medal of Honor early this year.

Prior to the blocked punt, my fondest recollection of Gleason had been a brief interview I had done with him a couple of seasons earlier for a middle-of-the-week feature in the middle of a season for a middle-of-the-road team.

I was struggling to find an angle to a story about a player who was good at his job but had a relatively limited role. Then I saw in his bio in the Saints media guide that he had worked as “a window washer on skyscrapers in Pullman, Washington” during the summers while he was a student-athlete at Washington State University.

“That’s a daredevil kind of a job and he’s a kamikaze on special teams,” I thought to myself, proudly figuring I had a clever angle.

But when I asked Gleason about that experience he replied, “Oh yeah, I made that up.”

It turns out the sports information director at Washington State had been pushing the players to reveal interesting details about their lives outside of football to spice up their bios. So Gleason, believing he didn’t have any interesting details to add, made up the window washer anecdote to spice up his bio.

“There aren’t any skyscrapers in Pullman, Washington,” he told me politely.

Then he laughed and apologized for ruining the angle to my story.

“Not at all,” I replied. “You just made it better.”

And so the story about the daredevil window washer on skyscrapers became a story about the special teams character with a sense of humor that had become a valuable player to the Saints.

As I reflect on it now, if ever there was a football player who didn’t need to embellish his non-football bio, it’s Steve Gleason.

* * *

So a lot has changed since that return to the Dome, a game that also featured John Carney kicking three field goals and the Saints defense harassing Michael Vick and the Falcons offense for 60 minutes.

The game itself was a much-needed three-hour diversion from the work still to be done in the lengthy recovery from Katrina.

The replay of the unique game was a much-needed three-hour diversion from the sadness, uncertainty, fear and downright boredom of the COVID-19 crisis, including the reality of so many familiar, comforting things being absent from our lives.

No one knows when the familiar and the comfortable will return.

Specifically, no one knows when the Saints will be coming again.

Perhaps late this summer.

But only perhaps.

That game originally provided a little bit of joy in the wake of the most challenging phase of a life-altering disaster.

Maybe reliving it will make us just a little more hopeful that the first phase of the recovery from this life-altering disaster might not be all that far away.