FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Wearing Mardi Gras beads and clearly exhausted from a late night of post-Super Bowl celebrations, Sean Payton leaned on a podium, clutching the Vince Lombardi trophy in his right hand.
"You can't get enough of this," the Saints' head coach said at a news conference at the Fort Lauderdale convention center Monday morning. "This thing lay in my bed next to me last night, rolled over it a couple times. I probably drooled on it. But man, there's nothing like it."
Certainly, the New Orleans Saints never experienced anything like it.
Before this one, the Saints had only eight winning seasons -- and two playoff victories -- in their previous 42 years combined. New Orleans had to win three postseason games over three great quarterbacks -- Kurt Warner, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning -- to win the title this season.
The last quarterback standing was Drew Brees, who joined Payton in 2006 with the idea of transforming the Saints into champions for a region needing widespread rebuilding after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
That was easier said than done, but in their fourth season together, they did it. Brees was chosen the Super Bowl MVP after Sunday night's 31-17 victory over the Indianapolis Colts. After that, his only remaining challenge was believing he'd actually pulled it off.
"I had to wake up this morning and turn to my wife and say, 'Did yesterday really happen?'" Brees said.
"Our victory last night was the culmination of four years of hard work, fighting through a lot of adversity, ups and downs and more importantly than that, representing a city that has been through so much," Brees said.
"Along the way, people have asked me so many times, 'Do you look at it as a burden or extra pressure? Do you feel like you're carrying the weight of the city on your teams' shoulders.' I said, 'No, not at all. We look at it as a responsibility.' Our city, our fans, gave us strength and we owe this to them. ... There's no people that you would want to win for more than the city of New Orleans."
As Brees spoke, Payton sat off to the side, elbows on knees, face buried in his hands. When it was his turn to speak, he recounted Vince Lombardi's grandson, Saints assistant Joe Lombardi, posing for a photo with the sterling silver hardware bearing his last name.
