MIAMI - Maybe it was having the guts to call that onside kick.
Maybe it was the message sent going for it on fourth down at the one.
Maybe it was the courage to challenge the call on the two-point conversion.
May be it was Colts kicker Matt Stover missing his first postseason field-goal attempt in the last 17.
Maybe it was the nerve to call that blitz on third-and-five at your own 31-yard line against the master blitz-buster Peyton Manning, who of all things gets picked off by Saints cornerback Tracy Porter for the game-sealing touchdown, incredibly the same Tracy Porter who picked off Brett Favre in the waning seconds of the NFC title game to force overtime.
Shoot, maybe it was the Archbishop of New Orleans getting permission from The Vatican to wear a Drew Brees No. 9 jersey over his robe while saying mass Sunday at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.
Face it, when The Vatican reportedly flies a Saints flag overhead on Feb. 6, 2010, for what we must guess is the first time in the history of the world, some things are just meant to be.
Saints 31, Colts 17, was just meant to be.
Yes, believe it, the Saints came marching in, and then out of Sun Life Stadium here Sunday night with the Lombardi Trophy, winning Super Bowl XLIV in not only dramatic but fittingly typical fashion for New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast Region so wronged by Mother Nature 4 1/2 years ago.
They came back. What's new?
Look, after you've been through what the Saints have been through for most of their previous 42 years, the laughing stocks of the NFL and one of just a few teams never ever to play in a Super Bowl, what's a 10-point first-quarter deficit?
When you've been through what the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast Region have been through, don't let anyone ever tell you a 10-point deficit that early in a game is Super Bowl insurmountable.
Come on, and I know that no this was not the Dallas Cowboys winning their sixth Super Bowl title, but admit it, you smiled. Hey, I even saw some smiles in the auxiliary press box when Brees took a victory knee from guys who have learned not to smile for a living.
You might even have shed a tear over this feel-good sports story. There were grown people among the 74,059 in the stands, and as you could tell if you were watching on TV mostly those loyal and loveable Saints fans, with, for a change, big tears of joy in their eyes.
"We just knew we had an entire city, maybe the entire country behind us," Brees said afterward, the glistening in his eyes from tears of his own. "God is good. Feeling like it was all meant to be, like destiny."
Want to argue?
Those former Cowboys making up this Saints championship team, the ones whose drive for an undefeated season was stopped at 13 straight by the Cowboys, 24-17, that Saturday night in the Superdome, would beg to differ. Scott Shanle. Scot Fajita. Remi Ayodele. Adam Zimmer, the son of Mike Zimmer, whose mother passed away midway through the season. And, of course, Sean Payton, who had the nerve to take a New Orleans job in January of 2006 on the heels of Hurricane Katrina that hardly anyone would have been crazy enough to take.
You try living in a hotel room for like five months after taking the job, and then convince a staff knowing they will have to live in that same hotel with you for nearly as long if they take the job since the city still was such a mucky mess.
Maybe that is why Payton, whose coaching career turned around during his three years with the Cowboys, wasn't about to let go of the Lombardi Trophy. He marched right into the postgame interview tent with the trophy in hand, propping it up on the table in front of him as he answered question after question.
When he wanted to emphasize what he was saying, he would sort of wave the Lombardi around. He just couldn't seem to take his hands off the silver beauty as he talked, and he sure didn't let anyone else carry it away for him as he even thanked members of the New Orleans media for being along for the ride, and hugged one long-time Saints reporter who had been banned from asking questions at one point this season.
"There is a lot of grit and determination in those people," said Payton, and I wasn't sure if he was talking about a team that went from trailing the Indianapolis Colts 10-0 to grabbing a 13-10 lead early in the third quarter or the people of New Orleans who are slowly rebuilding that city.
"I just wish we could split (the Lombardi Trophy) up in a lot of little pieces."
He just might have to if he actually carries that trophy on his foundation's float during a Mardi Gras parade.
Now we can argue what turned this game around, and of course Gregg Williams having the gall to blitz Manning, who passed for 333 yards by the way, on that third-and-five while only up 24-17, had a lot to do with Porter's pick six.
"We brought all the linebackers and anybody else who could get there if their guy was blocking," he would say of the pressure that was in Manning's face while tying to throw that quick slant to Reggie Wayne.
Then there was Brees, the game's MVP, completing an incredible 32 of 39 passes for 288 yards and two touchdowns. And remember, that's the guy San Diego passed on and the Miami Dolphins were too afraid to invest in, opening the door for Brees to eventually become a Saint - in more ways than you know.
But to me, the whole tenor of this game turned while The Who was blasting away "We Won't Get Fooled Again" during the lengthy Super Bowl halftime. The Saints had been outplayed the first half, yet only trailed 10-6 thanks to two 40-plus-yard field goals by Garrett Hartley, who eventually kicked another to become the first to make three 40-plus-yard field goals in Super Bowl history.
Worse, they were going to have to kick off. And the way the Colts offense had been moving, trailing 17-6 within minutes certainly was not out of the question. Payton knew what he had to do. He couldn't play this game scared. Not in the playoffs, and darn sure not in the Super Bowl. He had to be aggressive, had to show his team he had confidence in them, just as he did on the goal line when the Saints were stopped on fourth down at the one.
But most of all, he knew he had to do what he could do to get the ball out of Manning's hands - similar to the decision he made in that high-scoring affair against the Cowboys to keep the ball away from Tony Romo in the fourth quarter of their win at Texas Stadium. He called for a half-opening onside kick.
"We felt during the week there was more than a 60 to 70 percent chance of recovering it," Payton said walking off with the Lombardi in hand. "I told the offense to get ready.
"At halftime, I just told them, 'Hey we're going to open up the second half with this. It's going to be a great play. The time of possession was going to be important. What we were trying to do was create additional series, which we were able to do. Certainly we wanted to minimize (Manning's) snaps, which we were able to do."
So former SMU punter Thomas Morestead nailed a beauty in the ground on the kickoff, and after the ball bounced off the hands of the Colts Hank Baskett, the mad scramble began, ending with the ball in the pouch of Saints linebacker Jonathan Casillas at the New Orleans 42.
"Who would have thought we'd open the second half with an onside kick?" said Brees, who knew what was going on before they left the locker room at halftime, as did Morestead, who headed out onto the field to boom away practice kickoffs as normal.
From there, Brees made his head coach look even more like a genius, needing only six plays to get the Saints into the end zone on a 16-yard screen pass to Pierre Thomas for a 13-10 New Orleans lead.
At that point, the Who Dat Nation overwhelming Sun Life Stadium came alive. They started to believe. So did the Saints players. And even though the Colts drove right back for a touchdown to take a 17-13 lead four minutes later, the Colts knew they were in for a fight.
"We had a shot at it and just didn't get it done," said Colts first-year head coach Jim Caldwell, who did interview for the Cowboys head coaching job in 2007. "Just very disappointing, very disappointing."
And once Stover missed the 51-yard field goal, giving the Saints the ball at the 41 with 10:39 left in the game and trailing 17-16, Payton's play-calling and Brees' execution - he completed seven of seven passes on the nine-play drive - had the Saints in the end zone again. And when the two-point pass to Lance Moore was ruled incomplete, Payton kept his foot to the metal, winning the replay challenge for a 24-17 lead with just 5:42 to play.
You know the rest of the story. Or maybe it was just the next chapter, since this has been an ongoing four-year story of a whole bunch of people picking themselves up off the ground.
"I mean, are you kidding me?" Brees said when asked if the Saints continued to believe even after getting off to the slow start. "Four years ago, whoever thought this would be happening. Eighty-five percent of the city was under water. People were evacuating to places all over the country. Most people left not knowing if New Orleans would ever come back or if the organization would ever come back.
"Not only did the organization come back, the city came back and so may players, our core group of players that came in that year as free agents, we just all looked at one another and said, 'We're going to rebuild together. We are going to lean on each other.' That's what we've done the last four years and this is the culmination in all that belief."
No, the culmination will come in the next day or two when the mother of all victory parades is held in New Orleans. And no matter who you pull for in this National Football League, Cowboys, Texans, Packers or Cardinals, just try to tell me you wouldn't want to be in that number.
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Mickey Spagnola - 
