2009 season out-of-expectation: New Orleans Saints

When the 2009 season began, most of us were wondering who would make it to playoff games. Will the Pittsburgh Steelers win their seventh Super Bowl champion? Will it be the Minnesota Vikings as they brought Brett Favre out of retirement to put on the purple No.4 NFL jersey? Or will it be the Indianapolis Colts who had won all the last nine games of last season? But few believed that the New Orleans Saints could go such far as they are now.




The quarterback in No. 9 Saints jersey led the team to win every of the first 13 games of 2009 season, and Drew Brees was well-matched with Peyton Manning on MVP meter before the most votes eventually went to Manning. And it was almost for sure that the team lost their last three regular-season games on purpose to the Dallas Cowboys, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers.

Entering the post season competition for the playoff ticket, the Saints continued performing out of our expectation. Winning over the Arizona Cardinals 45-14, they played the next game against the Minnesota hard and managed to win the NFC championship with a 31-28 overtime win over the Vikings.

For the last game of the entire 2009 season, no one now could predict the result before the last minute of the game. The Indianapolis Colts are surely the best, but the Saints are just far from being wait-to-die.