Fat Sunday

We interrupt the regularly scheduled joyous hysteria visiting New Orleans on Fat Tuesday with an early bulletin: The New Orleans Saints — a team and a collective metaphor for the city it represents — won Super Bowl XLIV tonight.

That’s not a dispatch from the bizzarro world, as anyone who’s watched this spirited, inspired, talented team win and win and win all season already knows. It was the realest of real deals: 44 days after Christmas, 44 years after the Saints organization was first awarded an NFL franchise, the former whipping boy of the NFL won Super Bowl No. 44, defeating the Indianapolis Colts 31-17.

Fat Tuesday, Feb. 16, was already on the city’s calendar. You can call tonight Fat Sunday. Laissez les bon temps roulez, tout de suite.

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In a game that had analysts quietly licking their chops at the prospect of coronating Colts quarterback Peyton Manning as Perhaps the Greatest QB of All Time, the Saints spoiled the Colts party with one of their own.

Saints QB Drew Brees mixed it up the hard way, battling back despite an early 10-0 deficit, grinding it out play after play. The Saints combined dogged but spirited offense with opportunistic defense and Garrett Hartley, a field-goal kicker whose points after seemed almost laser-guided.

Saints head coach Sean Payton, who combined undeniable coaching skills with the guts of a burglar and the soul of a riverboat gambler, took risks in different ways throughout the game. Using everything from a smart (and successful) coach’s challenge to a timely reverse to the very act of gambling on Brees (who underwent shoulder surgery after the 2005 season) in the first place, Payton proved he wouldn’t play by the books.

It was most obvious tonight when the Saints, scoring a Hartley field goal in the second quarter to trail 10-6, started the second half with an onside kick.

A pre-fourth quarter onside kick, in the Super Bowl. Find that in the damn playbook. Who pulls shit like that? Payton’s crew does, and the Indianapolis Colts (anticipating the deep kick for a runback) were every bit as surprised as the TV analysts and the crowd at Florida’s SunLife Stadium. The Saints recovered the ball and started the second half of the game with a quick touchdown, and a serious shot to the psyche of the Colts. ESPN said it was the first successfully completed onside kick before the fourth quarter in Super Bowl history.

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Manning was off his feed much of the night; at times on the sidelines he seemed sullen, rattled and maybe even angry. And the Colts as a team were less than the sum of their well-oiled machine parts. The feared Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney spent much of the fourth quarter sidelined, nursing a still-healing torn ligament in his right ankle, offering himself as a testing aid to the trainers who practiced their taping skills on that ankle the rest of the game.

Little by little the tide turned and stayed turned. Hartley makes another field goal from deep space. Brees hits Jeremy Shockey for a TD that gives them the lead. Payton, bold again, successfully challenges the ruling that Lance Moore had not scored on the 2-point conversion. Saints 24-17.

Meanwhile, Colts kicker Matt Stover misses one from 51 yards out. Colts receiver Pierre Garcon drops a pass; later Garcon was called for offensive pass interference. In the aggregate, the Colts played a decent game, despite some key mistakes that on the whole weren’t more than any other team might post on any given Sunday.

But this was The Super Bowl. The Indianapolis Colts, who had posted stellar numbers all season en route to the best win-loss record in the NFL, had been playing like supermen. They picked the wrong game to turn into mere mortals.

It was all distilled in the last three minutes of the game. Down 24-17, Manning and the Colts mounted a feverish last-minute drive. Manning makes a short pass across the middle, a throw intended for Reggie Wayne. Not today. Looking for the main chance, Saints defensive back Tracy Porter intercepts the pass, and returns it 75 yards for a touchdown.

Game, set, match, title, party.

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It was hard not to be torn by deep, emotional — and, yeah, racial — affinities either way you placed your bets. You wanted to side with Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Caldwell, one of only five rookie head coaches to reach the Super Bowl, and one of only three African American coaches (Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are the others) to get to the big show.

But this year the stakes were bigger than victory for a team, more so than in any other Super Bowl in recent memory. What was at stake for New Orleans was its sense of itself, its idea of the possible four and a half years after the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.