Everyone loves lists. Everyone (at least in this city) also loves the Saints. So, why not combine the two?
This project began when a reader asked us about ranking the best players in Saints history. Since WWLTV.com had done that list prior to the 2009 season, we began to think about something that can always be discussed.
Immediately it turned to the most clutch plays in Saints history. This isn’t the definitive list; you may, in fact, disagree with some of the placements or some of the plays.
But what can’t be disputed is that the plays on this list were all memorable in their own right.
Our definition of clutch goes a little something like this: A big play, and in one case, series of plays, in a big game at a crucial moment in time. It’s a play that if it doesn’t happen, the outcome is likely changed in the game.
Several on the list came from the Super Bowl-winning season but that’s expected. Several did not.
And anyway, what better way to get people geared up for the season should a new Collective Bargaining Agreement come to fruition soon.
No. 6 ‘The most unlikely hero of them all’
Sometimes it’s just good to be lucky. Or at least at the right place at the right time.
For Brian Milne, luck equaled clutch in New Orleans’ wild card playoff game win against St. Louis on Dec. 30, 2000 when he recovered a fumbled punt, securing the Saints’ first-ever playoff victory more than 30 years after the franchise’s founding.
It’s hard to say this was a clutch play for Milne, who really just relied on the misfortune of St. Louis’ Az-zahir Hakim dropping a punt.
And yet, that Milne was doing what he was taught to do and had enough awareness to fall on the loose ball does make this a clutch play.
What goes into this, though, is everything that surrounded this game.
A week earlier, St. Louis came into the Superdome and beat the Saints 26-21, dropping New Orleans to 10-6 in Jim Haslett’s first year at the helm. The defending Super Bowl champion Rams, meanwhile, improved to 10-6.
The previous season, New Orleans went 3-13, helping to usher out Mike Ditka in what turned out to be a failed experiment in his return to coaching.
Previous to the Dec. 30 rematch, New Orleans had only played in four playoff games, losing all, including three home postseason tilts.
That New Orleans got to host the defending Super Bowl champs was a big deal. That the Saints, after falling behind 7-0 in the first quarter, reeled off 31 straight points whipped everyone into a frenzy.
But then the Rams, behind Kurt Warner, made the slow climb back into the game, eventually pulling within 31-28 in the fourth quarter.
And then St. Louis held the Saints, forcing a punt with 1:51 to play.
The rest, as the kids say, is history, as is Jim Henderson’s WWL Radio call of the play:
"Hakim drops the ball! Hakim drops the ball! Brian Milne might have fallen on it at the 10-yard line. It’s the New Orleans Saints football! Brian Milne, the most unlikely hero of them all, falls on the fumble, the muffed by Hakim! There is a God after all!"
Our panel: Tom Planchet, former WWL-TV sports producer and current operations manager for WWLTV.com; Scott Cody, WWL-TV Sports Reporter/Anchor; Adam Ney, WWL-TV Sports Producer; Danny Rockwell, WWL-TV Sports Producer; Garland Gillen, WWL-TV Sports Photographer and Reporter; Mike Hoss, former WWL-TV Sports Reporter and current WWL-TV anchor; Larry Holder, CBSSports.com writer and The Sports Hangover radio show co-host; Gus Kattengell, The Sports Hangover radio show co-host; Kristian Garic, WWL Radio host and Saints radio sideline reporter; Pat Yasinskas, ESPN.com NFC South writer; WWLTV.com contributor Ralph Malbrough; Bradley Handwerger, WWLTV.com Sports Writer.
