Today endless columns will be packed with punditry about last night’s excellent Super Bowl. And why not? It was a damn good game. Reasons advanced for the stunning victory of Saints will be more numerous than hungover fans on Bourbon Street. But, saturated with statistics, there is one fundamental truth that most of the journalists will miss. Confronted with possibly the best quarterback ever to play the game, one Peyton Manning, Saints coach Sean Payton did something too seldom seen in the game of professional football these days. He took risks.
He went for a touchdown on fourth down. Fail.
But it sent a message to the team -”I believe you can do this.”
And then; while the geriatric zombies formerly known as The Who adjusted their catheters and taped their urine bags to their legs long enough to wail a couple of once-familiar tunes that sounded like ring tones, all the while surrounded by enough pyrotechnics to end the war in Afghanistan overnight; back in the fetid locker room Sean Payton laid out his audacious plan for an onside kick.
And it worked, and it kept Peyton Manning warming the bench for an ungodly amount of time. The Colts went down because Manning could not take the field for long enough to do what he does better than anyone else, march off the yards and put points on the board.
Sean Payton took risks. He gambled. He slew the mammoth. He fed the tribe.
Message to all the pencil-necked scum-sucking, bottom-dwelling, over-reaching do-gooders out there who are putting helmets on little kids, and seat belts on toilets as you read this. MAN NEEDS RISK: not an overweening, seemingly benevolent Federal nanny. Go somewhere else and die! Slowly, so you have time to beg forgiveness for your arrogant sins!