METAIRIE, La. – For nearly 308 minutes of the 2009 football season, New Orleans didn’t know what it felt like to trail in a football game.
For 20 quarters, the Saints controlled the lead in games in which is played.
And for more than a month and a half, new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams had absolutely no idea how his charges would react when forced to play in adverse conditions.
All that changed on Sunday when Miami took a 7-0 lead with 7:20 to go in the opening quarter.
Williams surely liked what he saw. Everyone else in the Saints locker room did.
“Every team has resilience,” cornerback Jabari Greer said. “I think that the only thing that matters is what you do about it and I believe we did something about it.”
After falling behind 24-3 a quarter and a half into the game, the Saints responded alright. New Orleans outscored the Dolphins 43-10 over the final 30 minutes, 2 seconds, matching the franchises greatest come-from-behind victory ever.
New Orleans left Land Shark Stadium with a 46-24 win, but more importantly, the team left the stadium having answered any lingering questions about how good it really is.
“It’s something I think every guy in here knew,” receiver Marques Colston said. “We knew we had a special group and that’s just a perfect example on Sunday.”
No more can anyone ask if the Saints would crumble when faced with a deficit.
“When you win the games the way we’ve been winning so far this year, there’s still a question mark in people’s minds,” linebacker Scott Shanle said. “How are they going to respond when they’re the ones that have to come from behind? Our track record here hasn’t been that great in coming back when we’ve been down in a hole.”
If you were one of those wondering how New Orleans would do when it had to suddenly become the hunter in a game, you weren’t alone.
“At that point in the game, (down 24-3), Gregg came up to us on the sideline and was like, ‘I haven’t been with you guys in this situation. I don’t know how you guys are going to respond,’ ” Shanle said.
“It shows you the character and maturity of the guys on this team,” Shanle continued. “Most guys, when you’re down 24-3, are thinking about how fast we get this thing over with. There’s so much confidence defensively that we have in our offense knowing they can come back and we have confidence in ourselves.
“Get a turnover, put them in good field position and when they scored a touchdown before halftime and it was 24-10, you would have thought we were up 24-10.”
New Orleans entered Sunday’s game winning by an average of 19.8 points per game. And other than in its game against Buffalo, which was close for three quarters, no games were ever in doubt.
The Saints won by 18 over Detroit, by 26 over Philadelphia and by 20 over the Bills. New Orleans put down the Jets by 14 and manhandled the Giants by 21.
Never before had the team been down by a point let alone 21 with just 30 minutes to play.
“It gave us an opportunity to be resilient,” Greer said. “It humbled us. It brought us together. There was never a time in that locker room or on that sideline where we were falling apart.”
It’s also a good lesson for the long run. Come December and January, when the games mean much more than do now, the Saints know they’re not out of any game.
“That’s going to help us in the long run down the stretch,” tight end Jeremy Shockey said. “We can’t always be up by 10 points in the first quarter and 20 points in the first half.”
