New Orleans Saints

• 1. Introduction

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  The New Orleans Saints took the field for the first time on the 17th of September, 1967, at Tulane Stadium, and on the opening kickoff, receiver John Gilliam ran it back 94 yards for a touchdown. The crowd of more than 80,000 roared. Then the Saints lost, 27-13, to the Los Angeles Rams. It was a fitting preview of the next two decades.

  Founded on the 1st of November, 1966, by sports entrepreneur Dave Dixon, oilman John W. Mecom Jr., and the city of New Orleans, the Saints entered the NFL as an expansion franchise. Dixon had spent more than five years lobbying for a team, and he had a flair for symbolism. He insisted that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle delay the official announcement until November 1, to coincide with All Saints' Day. He cleared the team name with New Orleans Archbishop Philip M. Hannan, who gave his blessing. Hannan's reported comment, that "he had an idea the team was going to need all the help it could get," turned out to be prophetic.

  For twenty consecutive seasons, the Saints never posted a winning record or reached the playoffs. They were called the "'Aints." Fans wore paper bags over their heads. And then, slowly, everything changed. How a franchise born in losing became a Super Bowl champion, and what that championship meant to a city still rebuilding from a catastrophe, is the story the rest of this documentary will trace.

• 2. A City Gets Its Team

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  Dave Dixon had been trying to land an NFL franchise for New Orleans for over five years before Pete Rozelle came to town. The NFL Commissioner arrived within a week of a deal being struck, and on the 1st of November, 1966, made the expansion official. The timing was no accident. Dixon had pushed hard for that specific date, because All Saints' Day gave the franchise its name before a single player was signed.

  The team name came from "When the Saints Go Marching In," the jazz standard so bound up with New Orleans that no other name was seriously considered. Dixon cleared it with Archbishop Hannan, who blessed the idea with the dry observation that the team would probably need all the heavenly help available.

  John W. Mecom Jr., a young oilman from Houston, became the team's first majority stockholder. The colors he chose, black and gold, were a direct nod to the petroleum industry. Trumpeter Al Hirt, one of the city's most recognizable musical figures, came aboard as a part owner. U.S. House Majority Whip Hale Boggs of Louisiana had helped make the whole arrangement legally possible by attaching the NFL-AFL merger to antitrust exemption legislation in Congress.

  That inaugural 1967 season ended 3-11, but it set an NFL record for the most wins ever by a first-year expansion team. The first head coach, Tom Fears, would preside over years of struggle, but the franchise's roots in New Orleans culture, jazz, oil money, and political maneuvering, were deep from the start.

• 3. The Long Drought

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  On the 8th of November, 1970, kicker Tom Dempsey booted a 63-yard field goal at Tulane Stadium to beat the Detroit Lions 19-17 in the final seconds. The previous NFL record had stood seven yards shorter. It was the kind of singular, stunning moment the Saints produced occasionally, surrounded by years of losing.

  For most of their first twenty seasons, the Saints finished third or fourth in their division. Only the 1979 and 1983 teams reached .500 before 1987. The 1980 season brought a particular low point: the team lost its first 14 games, and local sportscaster Bernard "Buddy D" Diliberto encouraged fans to wear paper bags over their heads at home games. Many bags were labeled the "'Aints" rather than the Saints.

  Tom Benson, an automobile dealership owner and banker, purchased the franchise in 1985 and brought in Jim Finks as general manager and Jim Mora as head coach. The combination delivered the franchise's first winning record in 1987, a 12-3 mark in a season shortened by a players' strike. Mora's tenure produced four playoff appearances, built around a linebacking corps known as the "Dome Patrol," but the Saints never won a playoff game under him. His 93 wins during that stretch were three more than the entire franchise had won before his arrival.

  After Mora stepped down mid-season in 1996, Benson hired former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, who promptly traded away nearly all of his draft picks to select Heisman Trophy running back Ricky Williams from the University of Texas. Ditka and Williams had a mock wedding picture taken to mark the occasion. The Saints went 3-13 that season, and Ditka was fired. Dempsey's 63-yard record, meanwhile, stood for decades, until Matt Prater of the Denver Broncos kicked one yard farther.

• 4. First Wins, Then Katrina

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  Jim Haslett took over as head coach in 2000 and led the Saints to a 10-6 record that season. In their first-ever playoff win, they defeated the defending Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams, clinging to a three-point lead when Rams return man Az-Zahir Hakim fumbled a punt deep in Rams territory, and Brian Milne recovered for New Orleans. The Saints ran out the clock to preserve the 31-28 victory, ending a 34-year wait for a postseason win.

  The seasons that followed were uneven. The Saints beat the eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers twice during the 2002 regular season, yet still missed the playoffs. A 2004 Wild Card race came down to the final week, with three teams tied at 8-8 and conference records deciding who advanced. The Saints were eliminated despite beating one of those teams directly.

  Then came 2005. Hurricane Katrina struck with devastating force, flooding the Superdome and much of the city. The Saints played no regular season home games in New Orleans that year. Their scheduled home opener against the New York Giants was moved to Giants Stadium. The remaining home dates were split between the Alamodome in San Antonio and LSU's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. The team finished 3-13. Haslett was fired.

  The damage to the Superdome was extensive. What it would take to bring the Saints home, and what their return would mean to New Orleans, was a question the city would soon answer in dramatic fashion.

• 5. The Comeback Season

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  On the 17th of January, 2006, the Saints hired Sean Payton as head coach. Less than two months later, on the 14th of March, they signed former San Diego Chargers quarterback Drew Brees to a six-year, $60 million deal. After a $185 million renovation of the Louisiana Superdome, the stage was set for something larger than a football game.

  The home opener on the 25th of September, 2006, was the first game played in New Orleans since Katrina. Tom Benson announced that the Superdome had sold out its entire season on season tickets alone, 68,354 seats, a first in franchise history. The actual crowd that night was 70,003. Green Day performed "Wake Me Up When September Ends" before kickoff; U2 performed "The Saints Are Coming." The game's broadcast on ESPN drew an 11.8 rating and reached 10.85 million homes, the network's highest-rated program to that point, and the second-highest-rated cable program of all time at that moment.

  The Saints won that night, 23-3, against the Atlanta Falcons. The moment Saints fans most remember is Steve Gleason's blocked punt on the opening series, which became a touchdown for New Orleans. The game received a 2007 ESPY Award for Best Moment in Sports.

  The Saints finished that season 10-6 and won the NFC South title, the franchise's first. In the divisional playoff round, they beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-24. Sean Payton became the second consecutive Saints coach to win a division title in his first season. The run ended with a 39-14 loss to the Chicago Bears in the NFC Championship, but the foundation had been laid for something historic.

• 6. Super Bowl XLIV

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  The 2009 Saints opened by winning their first 13 games, a start that set the record for the longest undefeated opening in NFC history since the AFL-NFL merger, surpassing the previous mark of 12-0 held by the 1985 Chicago Bears. Three late-season losses followed, making the Saints the first team ever to win a Super Bowl after losing their final three regular season games.

  In the NFC Championship, New Orleans faced the Minnesota Vikings, led by Brett Favre, and won 31-28 in overtime. The television ratings for Super Bowl XLIV were the second highest ever recorded for any program, sports or otherwise, in American broadcast history. The game carried a weight beyond sports: many viewers saw the Saints' drive to a championship as a symbol of New Orleans recovering from Katrina.

  The Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17. Drew Brees was named Super Bowl MVP. He was also named the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year for 2006, honoring his community work in New Orleans after the hurricane.

  The Saints became one of only two NFL franchises, along with the New York Jets, to win their sole Super Bowl appearance. That singular championship brought a shadow with it. The win later drew controversy after evidence emerged of a "bounty" program run by the Saints' defense, in which players were allegedly paid extra for injuring opponents. The scandal would cost the team dearly in the seasons that followed, including a year-long suspension for head coach Sean Payton.

• 7. Brees and the Record Books

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  Drew Brees spent fifteen seasons with New Orleans, from 2006 through 2020, and restructured what the franchise's statistical records looked like. He finished his Saints career with 68,010 passing yards, 491 touchdowns, and a passer rating of 101.5, all franchise records by a wide margin.

  His single-season marks were similarly commanding. In 2011, he threw for 5,476 yards and 46 touchdowns in a season that also saw the Saints score 547 points as a team, still the franchise record. That same year, running back Darren Sproles set the NFL record for all-purpose yards in a single season, and the Saints' total offensive output broke numerous league marks. In 2016, Brees set Saints records for passing attempts (673) and completions (471) in a single year.

  Some records reached beyond the franchise entirely. In 2012, Brees broke Johnny Unitas's long-standing record for consecutive games with a touchdown pass, a streak that eventually ran to 54 games before ending in Atlanta that same season. In 2018, his single-season completion percentage of 74.4 percent set the NFL record. In 2019, Michael Thomas caught 149 passes in the regular season, also an NFL record.

  On the 25th of December, 2020, running back Alvin Kamara scored six touchdowns against the Minnesota Vikings, tying the NFL record for touchdowns in a single game and scoring 36 points. It was Brees's final playoff season. He retired after the 2020 campaign. In 2026, Drew Brees was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as the fifth Saint inducted primarily for work in New Orleans.

• 8. Identity in Black and Gold

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  The Saints' colors were not John Mecom Jr.'s first choice. He wanted Mecom blue, a medium shade used across his other business ventures. The NFL told him the combination was too close to the San Diego Chargers' palette, and since the merger with the AFL was still fresh, the league preferred not to cause friction. Mecom settled on black and gold as a nod to oil, because "black gold" is a term for petroleum.

  The team's logo, the fleur-de-lis, is a symbol of New Orleans and of France's Royal Family, including the House of Bourbon, the dynasty that shaped French Louisiana. Except for minor adjustments, the logo and the uniforms have remained essentially unchanged since 1967.

  One early detour: the Saints wore black helmets during the 1969 preseason, but Commissioner Rozelle barred them for the regular season because Mecom had not notified the league. Black helmets did not return until 2022, when the NFL repealed its "one-helmet rule." The 2022 alternate helmet featured a gold fleur-de-lis on each side with a triangle pattern of tiny gold fleur-de-lis logos, and it made its official debut at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London against the Minnesota Vikings on the 2nd of October, 2022.

  The subtropical heat at Tulane Stadium also shaped uniform choices. During Archie Manning's first game in the 1971 season opener against the Los Angeles Rams, field temperatures reached 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The heavily favored Rams struggled in the heat, and the Saints won 24-20 on a Manning quarterback sneak on the game's final play, their first-ever win over those rivals. When the Superdome opened in 1975, the Saints shifted to white pants, and the uniform evolution has continued ever since, with the 2025 season adding a white helmet featuring a gold facemask and fleur-de-lis silhouettes on a gold center stripe.