Saints - Patiently Keeping the Faith

For the New Orleans Saints, the Louisiana representative of the Southern Division of the National Football Conference (NFC), life in the National Football League (NFL) has been one long exercise in patience. Since their establishment as an expansion franchise in 1966, the Saints have been on an upward trajectory - but one with a very slight uphill grade. It took them more than ten years to manage a breakeven season, and another decade beyond that to finally have their first season with more wins than defeats. They didn't manage a playoff victory until the 2000 campaign. Saints fans have had to endure far more downs than ups over the last four decades as their team struggled to find its place in an NFL dominated by concepts of parity, but throughout it all, patience has been the byword.

Wearing bags

To get an idea of just how ineffective the Saints have often been, and how important patience and faith in the team have been over the decades, you only have to look at the season of 1980. In a campaign that saw the New Orleans team get beaten in their first fourteen contests, fans became so frustrated that they adopted the habit of hiding their faces and heads underneath paper bags in an expression of outright shame and humiliation. The expression became so popular that it was eventually used by fans of other poor-performing teams as well.

Katrina's impact and the team's comeback

The coming of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 marked a low point for the Saints in recent history. The waters in New Orleans had made the team's stadium unfit for NFL play, which then forced the team to compete on the road throughout the entire season. As you might expect, this made an uphill climb even steeper, and the team wound up losing thirteen of its sixteen games. It almost seemed pointless to bother with the cries of "wait 'til next year". But as the Superdome became fit for play in 2006, the team found that everything had changed. They enjoyed a magical season that saw them not only win the South, but earn a berth in the NFC championship game. Despite being beaten by Chicago - a game short of the Super Bowl - fans of the team were sure that they would be back soon and eventually compete for the NFL title.

Which road leads to the Super Bowl?

Of course, the Saints wouldn't be the Saints if they didn't take two steps back for every step forward. After their stellar 2006 season, they followed up with two mediocre seasons in a row before launching into the 2009 campaign. That season saw the team run out to a thirteen straight wins, finishing the season with a 13-3 record. Their victory in the NFC title game was their first ever, and propelled them into Super Bowl XLIV against the seemingly unstoppable Indianapolis Colts. The Saints, however, were not about to be kept from their first-ever NFL title, and went on to win the game in convincing fashion. For long-suffering Saints fans and players, it was a fitting reward for decades of patience.
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