Finally, the Creole Deal for Saints

GEAUX! SAINTS GEAUX! reads the sign taped to the back window of the New Orleans taxi cab, the one equipped with two Saint baseball caps--one on the driver’s head, one on the dashboard-- otherwise known around here as proper day and evening wear.

Another cabby interrupts a conversation about Saint Coach Jim Haslett with a soul-probing confession. “I’ve never said this about a man,” he says very earnestly, very seriously, “but I love that man.”

Inside a Mid-City restaurant on New Year’s Eve, a local woman hears the name of the man who last coached the Saints to the playoffs, Jim Mora, and she instantly claps both hands over her ears and shrieks. “No! No! No!” she exclaims. “I never want to hear that name again!”

For 34 years, America sat back and wondered what would happen to New Orleans if the Saints ever won a playoff game.

Now we know: The city has gorged itself on a heady gumbo mix of unbridled pride, passion, relief, good-riddance to old downers and a near superhuman tolerance for spontaneously erupting a cappella versions of “Who Let the Dogs Out?”--the new civic anthem in a city that used to be known for its jazz, but that was before Saturday.

Where did the dogs go?

Ask a Saint fan and he or she will tell you that one went to Indianapolis and the other to CBS.

Mora, Mr. 0-4, left town in 1997 amid growing suspicion that he would never win a playoff game and moved to Indianapolis, where he hasn’t proved anyone wrong yet.

Mike Ditka, the man who succeeded Mora, traded away an entire draft for Ricky Williams, went 3-13 in 1999 and infuriated all of New Orleans by observing that, all things considered, he’d rather be in Chicago, bailed last winter and landed behind the CBS football analysts’ desk, where he now infuriates fans in the other 30 NFL cities.

And what did they leave behind?

By the end of the first quarter of the Saints’ wild-card playoff game against St. Louis, this was the updated inventory check:

No draft choices from the 1999 draft.

No Williams, still not fully recovered from a broken ankle suffered in November.

No Jeff Blake, the Saints’ No. 1 quarterback, sidelined because of a broken foot.

No Joe Horn, the Saints’ leading receiver, injured on the third play of the game.

So with backup quarterback Aaron Brooks passing the ball to backup wide receiver Willie Jackson and handing it to backup running back Terry Allen, the Saints had the Super Bowl champion Rams backed up against a 31-7 wall in the fourth quarter before staving off the last death throes of Traditional Postseason Sainthood and avoiding one more Mora! Mora! Mora! kamikaze crash--thank you so much, Az-Zahir Hakim--for a 31-28 decision.

Minutes after Saint Brian Milne had recovered Hakim’s fumbled punt, Haslett marked the occasion of the Saints’ inaugural playoff victory by predicting two more and a berth in Super Bowl XXXV.

“I think the Rams are the best team in the NFC,” Haslett said, “and we beat them. I don’t know why we can’t go and do what we’ve got to do.”

Contrast that to Mora’s postgame assessment after he took everything Haslett doesn’t have--namely, Peyton Manning, Edgerrin James and Marvin Harrison--to Miami, blew a 14-0 lead and lost in overtime, 23-17.

“I know the expectations at the beginning of the year were very, very high for this football team,” Mora said, “and that was based strictly on what our record was last year. I personally think they were too high.”

(Above quote soon to be featured on the dust jacket of the upcoming Mora biography, “When Pride Still Mattered and Don Shula Still Coached the Colts.”)

This is very disappointing on Mora’s part. He’s now 0-6 in the playoffs. He has been through enough of these postseason post-mortems, he ought to know the correct way to spin them.

How low should expectations go when you were 13-3 a year ago and bring back the best quarterback-running back-receiver trio in the league?

Should you expect to lose, with that combination of offensive talent, to a team with an offensive agenda no more complicated than pitching the ball back to Lamar Smith?

Indianapolis General Manager Bill Polian tried to throw Mora a life preserver, observing, accurately, the Colt defense was substandard and “that’s my fault. We’ve got to get better in the personnel area. You look at the teams that advance, they’ll be the ones with the most reliable defense.”

Let’s see:

Saints over Rams, who allowed 471 points during the regular season, the seventh-highest total in league history. Check.

Dolphins over Colts, who could manage but a field goal during the final 48 1/2 minutes in Miami. Check.

Baltimore Ravens over Denver Broncos, 21-3, followed by Raven defensive tackle Tony Siragusa bellowing, “We’re the baddest defense ever!” Check.

Philadelphia Eagles over Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 21-3.

Three out of four isn’t bad.

Tampa Bay, we had been told for several years, has the best defense in the NFC. Held the Rams to 11 points in the 1999 conference title game. Will have four defensive starters in next month’s Pro Bowl, including tackle Warren Sapp, who laughed when Donovan McNabb had the temerity to call the Eagle defense the best in the conference. Sapp: “Donovan said that? It’s a beautiful country we have.”

The Buccaneers couldn’t have had a simpler defensive assignment Sunday. An entire week of game films and preparation could have been boiled down to two words: Stop McNabb.

They couldn’t.

McNabb completed 24 of 33 passes for 161 yards and two touchdowns, then ran eight times for 32 yards and another touchdown. “We were helpless against him,” Tampa Bay Coach Tony Dungy said . . . and who else would like to see a do-over in that NFL most-valuable-player voting?

Marshall Faulk outpolled McNabb for the award, 24 votes to 11, and in the biggest game of his season, in a must-win playoff encounter in New Orleans, against the same defense he had shredded for 220 yards six days earlier, Faulk went out and produced one rushing yard for every vote received.

His final totals: 24 yards, 14 carries, 1.7 average, Rams lose by three.

His award-winning season, then, in 25 words or less:

MVP one week.

DNP the next.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

NFC

NEW ORLEANS (11-6) at MINNESOTA (11-5); 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Ch. 11

PHILADELPHIA (12-5) at N.Y. GIANTS (12-4); 1:15 p.m. Sunday, Ch. 11

* AFC

MIAMI (12-5) at OAKLAND (12-4), 1 p.m. Saturday, Ch. 2

BALTIMORE (13-4) at TENNESSEE (13-3), 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Ch. 2