Notes from the Desk - 02/11/10

Picking up on a theme from a different section of the paper, this week’s Notes from the Desk highlights the winners and losers from last weekend’s Super Bowl (all Katrina references purposely omitted).

Winner: Drew Brees.

Four seasons ago, this man was coming off a torn labrum in his throwing shoulder, had been unceremoniously dumped by the San Diego Chargers in favor of Phillip Rivers and was rejected by then Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban as too large of an injury risk to sign.

Not only was he named Super Bowl MVP in leading the Saints to their first-ever world championship, but he did it by connecting on 29 of 32 passes after a difficult first quarter. Not surprising, considering that his 70.6 percent regular season completion percentage was the best ever for a starting quarterback.

Plus, the image of him crying tears of joy while holding his year-old son might have been the best moment of the entire night.

Loser: Nick Saban. Seriously, Daunte Culpepper over Drew Brees in 2005? For a guy who can reliably predict which 17-year-olds will be good football players when they’re 20, he sure swung and missed on this one.

Loser: Jim Caldwell. I’m all for being stoic, but at least prove to us that you’re alive!

Winner: Sean Payton. Sure, the onside kick was bold, and even bolder when you consider that a Colts recovery would likely have led to, at minimum, a 13-6 deficit, but even more audacious was the decision to entrust the biggest play in Saints history to rookie kicker Sean Morstead and backup safety Chris Reis, the players in charge of kicking and recovering the ball respectively.

As Morstead told Sports Illustrated reporter Peter King after the game, “I wasn’t worried; I was terrified.” There were a million things that could have gone wrong with that play, many outside the Saints’ control, but all Payton saw was an opportunity to wrest control of the second half.

Winner: Chris Reis. As primarily a special teams player, Reis earns his paycheck by fighting longer and working harder than anyone else on the field — both things that came in handy as he scratched and clawed for the ball following Morstead’s perfect kick.

It’s rare that the first person to land on a loose ball still has his hands on it when he emerges from the scrum, but Reis wasn’t going to let go.

Loser: Everyone else at the bottom of that scrum. Kicking, clawing, punching, pinching, gouging, pick a gerund and it goes on at the bottom of one of those piles.

Loser: Hank Baskett. As a wide receiver, he can’t let an onside kick bounce off his hands like that.

Winner: Pierre Thomas. Single-handedly took a Brees screen-pass 16 yards to give the Saints their first lead of the game.

Winner: Joseph Addai. The LSU product turned a deaf ear to all the criticism of the Colts running attack and quietly posted 77 yards on only 13 carries, including a four-yard touchdown run showcasing a surprising blend of power and shiftiness.

Loser: Pierre Garçon. Two weeks after the Haitian-American draped a Haitian flag over his AFC Championship MVP trophy, he turned in an erratic performance in his first Super Bowl. The second-year player out of Division III Mount Union caught five balls for 66 yards, including a pretty touchdown, but his second-quarter drop of a perfectly thrown Peyton Manning pass on third and four cost the Colts a chance to pad their tenuous 10-3 lead.

Winner: Tracy Porter. That makes two games in a row he has picked off a future hall-of-famer with the game on the line. Doubtful that he will ever be able to buy a beer in New Orleans again.

Winner: New Orleans. I promised I wouldn’t mention Katrina, but three years ago it was doubtful this team would last in New Orleans until 2010, let alone win a Super Bowl. The local economy was so bad that nobody thought it could continue to support a football team, and owner Tom Benson publicly acknowledged the likelihood of relocation.

Plus, the Saints win the Super Bowl the same week Mardi Gras kicks off?!? From the heights of St. Charles to the depths of The Quarter, the Big Easy is going to be rocking this week with chants of: “Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?!?” I said: “Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say…” Winner: David Foote.