There is no guarantee the Saints would have won Sunday if a call had gone their way. Nothing in the NFL is a given; a painful lesson every coach, player and fan learns at least once.

All that being said when you have a QB the caliber of Drew Brees and a coach with a 118-74 W/L record you feel pretty good about 1st and goal in a 20-20 game with 1:45 to go and the Rams having just one timeout.

Yet that first and goal never came because a penalty wasn’t called on 3rd and 10:

From this angle it almost looks close enough to be waved away as “letting them play”.

The following angle shows that it most likely was a penalty:

Saints fans have been rightfully upset about this, with comments ranging from reasonable (“we should be able to review no-calls and penalties”) to the not so reasonable (Such as citing an article by PFT about the commissioner being able to change the results of a game)

I’m not interested in talking about most of that, what I’m looking to talk about is the cosmic justice that was finally dealt to the Saints yesterday and a game that seems destined to be eternally relevant to the NFL post season…

The 2009 NFC Championship: Vikings @ Saints

If you missed this game, or weren’t a fan during this time, the game is a classic.

The #2 Seed Vikings(12-4) traveled to the Super Dome to face the #1 Seed Saints(13-3).

The previous weekend both teams had demolished their divisional round opponents, the Vikings crushed the Cowboys (11-5) 34-3 and the Saints ran roughshod over the defending NFC Champion Cardinals (10-6) 45-14.

The two teams combined to field 17 Pro Bowlers and 7 All-Pros.

With the 14-2 Colts having won the AFC Championship game over the upstart Jets earlier in the afternoon, it seemed like we were going to get what we all want every year: the two best teams battling it out in the Super Bowl.

It didn’t matter who won the NFC Championship for this narrative. We’d get a HOF QB vs HOF QB in the Super Bowl no matter who won Vikes-Saints, the main question was would it be Brees-Manning or Favre-Manning?

The game was played and it was the classic we’d hoped for. It went to OT, it had Favre make gunslinging plays, Adrian Peterson scored three times, Drew Brees led a game winning OT drive!

Final: 31-28 Saints

For a time, the game was most famous for Favre’s errant pick in the closing seconds that wiped away a chance at a long field goal for Minnesota

The narrative was pretty obvious: You live by Favre’s antics, you die by them.

It opened up a debate about OT as well, Favre never touched it in over time and the Saints kicked a field goal to win it- which led to the rule changes in the now standard OT procedure.

Once the Bounty Gate scandal came out, things changed.

People started to revisit the Saints post season run.

They had knocked out and ended Kurt Warner’s career in the divisional round:

And were seemingly trying (unsuccessfully) to murder Brett Favre in the NFCCG:

But they were caught, nothing else you could do. Right?

The Saints lost a 2nd round pick(!) and Sean Payton was suspended along with DC Gregg Williams.

But that felt light. This scandal changed games.

“They had plenty of chances to win!”

This was a common phrase from Saints fans when you brought up the bounty scandal, and it held a lot of weight- as it should. The Saints did play dirty, but the Vikings had turned the ball over 5 times.

The Saints also won the Super Bowl in a mostly clean game, so this was largely forgotten.

But where was the justice? Not the punishment, but the justice?

Minneapolis Miracle

For many Vikings fans, it happened 8 years later in the divisional round:



The Vikes ended the Saints hopes and snatched victory from the Saints with no time left on the clock.

And it happened moments after Sean Payton antagonized the crowd by doing the Skol chant:

And there was the revenge for the 2009 game. It felt great for the Vikings, it crushed the Saints.

But it wasn’t justice- It was a closely contested game between two very talented squads that came down to a rookie safety making a mistake against a Pro Bowl wideout. It also kept the Saints from an NFCCG, but the Vikings were kept from the Super Bowl!

The justice came this year.

A role reversal

Everything that went the Saints way in 2009 went against them.

A controversial pass interference call- in 2009 the Saints had one go their way to put them in field goal range in OT.

And then the Saints got to experience their very own “Why would our Hall Of Fame QB throw that with the game on the line?”

And there you have it, moments later Greg Zuerlein kicked the Rams to their first Super Bowl since 2001 (coincidentally also against Tom Brady and the Pats.)

Because you don’t get to just hang out +1 in the world of football unless you quit while you’re ahead, fate or destiny or the football gods (a catch all term for the law of averages and good coaching) simply won’t allow you to be +1. Sooner or later, you go back down to 0. The Saints got away with one- 2009, and now they got one taken away- 2018.

But that’s not my point here.

The Saints and Vikings both had plenty of chances to win the game and the fact is that refs are human. Penalties are a part of the game, both incorrect calls and no calls. Sometimes they go your way, sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.

Closing Thoughts

But speaking of destiny or coincidence or whatever term you prefer to use the Rams kick started the Pats dynasty in 2001 when they lost the Super Bowl to them. Now 20 years later is there a chance they also end it two weeks from now? Everyone except Pats and NFC West fans sure hopes so! But it’s also equally likely that the Pats grab their 3rd Super Bowl in 5 seasons. There is very little left to be said in that category.

I also enjoy how the 2009 NFC Championship, the first NFCCG to be played in the 2010’s, ended up being a harbinger and excellent preview of the decade to come.

It showed the first modern instance of a QB playing until he was in his late 30’s early 40s, it brought the broken over time rules to the forefront of the NFL( a debate that still goes on), and it brought the penalty and the need for penalty reviews to the front as well(another debate that rages on).

It was a game for the ages, and not just for the on field product.