Kim A. Chiasson
February 2, 2010Wednesday, Feb. 4
February 4, 2010
For the New Orleans Saints, it’s a chance to do something they’ve never done before.
For the Indianapolis Colts, it’s a chance to cement their legacy as the team of the decade.
For football fans, it’s a chance to see the two best teams throughout the entire NFL season lock horns.
Regardless of which side of the three-sided spectrum you’re on, the 44th version of the Super Bowl will have some Louisiana flavor for the first time on Sunday when the NFC Champion Saints tangle with the AFC Champion Colts in Miami.
Kickoff is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. and the game will be shown on CBS.
“It feels great and it’s a blessing to be here,” said Saints wide receiver Devery Henderson. “We’ve worked for it. We put together a good team. We stuck together and got there.”
After being beaten up for most of the back-end of the season, both the Saints and Colts will prance into Miami without many battle wounds from the playoffs.
“We came out of the game fairly healthy,” said Saints head coach Sean Payton during the week. “From a health standpoint, it’s all pretty good.”
The Colts are in the same boat as the Saints and they are close to 100 percent heading into the big game.
But the Colts might be without their dominant defensive end Dwight Freeney, who the team said will be a game-time decision with a torn ligament in his ankle.
Indianapolis was maligned earlier in the season for giving up their chance at a perfect season to rest their players, but team president Bill Polian said on an Indianapolis radio show this week the gamble has clearly paid off.
“We got to our playoff games healthy and with our team intact,” Polian said.
Recent history has not been favorable to the Saints against the Colts as Indianapolis has won the past two meetings between the teams by a combined 96-31 margin.
Colts quarterback Peyton Manning has been a Saints-killer throughout his career and he has completed 38-of-55 passes for 602 yards with nine touchdowns and zero interceptions in his last two meetings against the Black and Gold.
Manning’s most memorable performance against his father Archie’s former team was a six-touchdown performance he orchestrated in a 55-21 Colts win in the Superdome in 2003.
The New Orleans native figures to have a few more tricks up his sleeve on Sunday – he always does, according to Colts receiver and fellow New Orleans native Reggie Wayne.
“We’ll come in Sunday and we’ll have an addition to our game plan,” said Wayne. “That’s the way it works with him. You just have to be ready for it. It’s been that way for nine years. It’s never finalized.”
But this year’s Saints team has paid little attention to what has happened in the past and they’ve shunned the franchise’s losing tradition all season – earning the No. 1 seed in the conference and winning the NFC for the first times ever.
All of this has come just five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.
“It’s been one step at a time. It hasn’t always been easy,” said Saints quarterback Drew Brees. “We’ve had to fight through plenty of adversity just like this city has. We know what it’s meant to thus far to this community, not only the regular season, but also being able to host two playoffs games, what it did for this economy and what it did for the spirit of this city and these people.”
The challenge now for the Saints will be to stay focused.
With their berth in the Super Bowl already on lock, most fans in the “Who Dat Nation” are already satisfied with the team’s season, regardless of the outcome of the big game.
But Brees said that type of thinking is not allowed in Saints camp this week.
“It doesn’t get any easier. We know the type of team the Colts are, the type of organization that they are and have been for a long time,” he said. “They’re a dynasty in their own right. The season they’ve had, the season we’ve had, I can’t think of two better teams to meet in the Super Bowl.”
Colts coach Jim Caldwell said despite some saying the Saints will be complacent coming into the game, he knows his team will need to be ready to play in what he calls an “outstanding matchup for the NFL.”
“We’re really going to have to go to work,” Caldwell said. “They can run the ball. They can throw it with the best of them. They’ve put a lot of points on the board, so they’re tough to handle … Teams, when they get to this point, they don’t have too many holes, and they certainly don’t.”
