"You guys shouldn't write about us being a playoff team. ... That's malarkey," Mora said in the postgame. "We ain't good enough to beat those guys and it was proven out there today. It's that simple. ... We're close, and close don't mean s---. And you can put that on TV for me. ... I'm tired of saying could've, should've, would've. That's why we ain't good enough yet, because we're saying could've and they ain't."

Looking back on that rant, among others, Mora himself isn't filled with quite the same fire.

"I'm not proud of a lot of the things I said, and that's very truthful," he admits now. "I'm an emotional guy, I say things that sometimes you don't need to say publicly. But I always basically said what I felt, and that's just me."

Ask any of the players in that locker room and the message was received -- loud and clear.

"It was a wakeup call for us, and he was right -- we always came up short," Swilling says. "After a while, if you start to believe that that's good enough, then that's who you are."

"That's the way I felt," Johnson echoes. "This is the NFL. It's not the 'come close' league. You have to win. At the end of the season, they don't add up how many games you came close to winning."

After that speech, the Saints stopped coming close and piled up nine straight victories, including the Pittsburgh triumph detailed above, plus revenge over the 49ers in Candlestick Park in November and a win over the Buccaneers in December to secure the franchise's first-ever playoff berth.

Sadly, the magic ran out after that, with the team suffering a 44-10 blowout loss in a wild-card game at the Superdome at the hands of the 8-7 Vikings.

"I blame myself," Mora admits, looking back on the season. "I had a tendency as a coach to work teams a little too hard. We were rolling along and doing things the way that were helping us win early in the season. I probably should have eased off on the team with the difficulty of practices and stuff like that."

After a brief pause, Mora adds: "We were good enough to go on. We just didn't do it."

"I've never felt so empty in my life, and I'll never forget that," Swilling adds. "There were a couple things we all could have done to make a difference."

With the bitter taste of defeat in their mouths, the Dome Patrol picked themselves up and soldiered on. From 1987 on, the Saints never had a losing season when all four members of the Patrol were starting together. In that run were three more playoff appearances, including the franchise's first division title in 1991.