Twenty years later, it is easy to look at the 2006 New Orleans Saints and remember what came next. The blocked punt against Atlanta. The reopening of the Superdome. Drew Brees throwing the football all over the field. Sean Payton turning a franchise accustomed to losing into an NFC contender almost overnight. Eventually there would be division championships, record-setting offenses and a Lombardi Trophy.
But before any of that happened, there was Millsaps College in Jackson.
On August 26, 2006, the Saints walked across the street from their month-long training camp home at Millsaps College and into Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium for a preseason game against the Indianapolis Colts.It was technically an meaningless preseason matchup. Looking back 20 years later, it feels more like a snapshot of football history.
There was Peyton Manning playing his first game in the old Jackson stadium where his dad, Archie, had once been one of Mississippi’s biggest football stars. There was Deuce McAllister, another Ole Miss legend, playing in front of his home-state fans. There was rookie Reggie Bush, only months removed from becoming one of the most celebrated college football players in America.
And behind center for New Orleans was a quarterback still trying to prove his surgically repaired throwing shoulder could hold up.
Drew Brees.
The Colts won 27-14 in front of 58,228 people. Nobody left Veterans Memorial Stadium that night thinking they had just witnessed an important chapter in Saints history.
But they had.
The Saints needed somewhere to go
To understand why the Saints were playing an Indianapolis “home game” in Jackson, you have to remember where the franchise stood in 2006. Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans almost exactly one year earlier. The Superdome had suffered extensive damage after serving as a shelter of last resort, and the Saints spent the 2005 season displaced from New Orleans.
By the following summer, the franchise was committed to returning to New Orleans, but the Superdome wasn’t ready yet. The building was undergoing a massive reconstruction project. Work had begun in earnest in March 2006, with hundreds of workers racing to have the stadium ready for the regular season.
That meant the Saints couldn’t play either of their designated home preseason games there. So they took them on the road. The first was against the Cowboys on August 21 at Independence Stadium in Shreveport. Five nights later, the Colts came to Jackson.
The rest of the preseason was literally on the road as well. The Saints opened at Tennessee and finished at Kansas City. The Saints would not play a single preseason game inside the Superdome.
Even when the regular season arrived, they still weren’t ready to go home. Opening with road games at Cleveland and Green Bay before finally returning to the Superdome on September 25 against Atlanta. Jackson, however, had become much more than a temporary place to play a football game.
It had become the Saints’ summer home.
The Payton era was forged at Millsaps
Sean Payton had been hired in January. Drew Brees signed in March. Reggie Bush was drafted in April. Then, in July, everybody came to Jackson. The Saints announced that June that they were moving training camp from their Metairie facility to Millsaps College. Payton preferred taking his team away from its normal surroundings, believing the isolation could eliminate distractions and help build chemistry.
Players reported July 27. Practice began the next day. What followed became legendary among the players who survived it. Jackson in July and August isn’t exactly known for forgiving weather, and Payton wasn’t interested in running a comfortable training camp. The Saints practiced on the Millsaps fields in oppressive Mississippi heat, often in pads and often twice a day.
Years later, Marques Colston called that first Millsaps camp “brutal.” Zach Strief remembered it as the hardest physical and mental experience he’d gone through as a football player. Brees later compared the purpose of the camp to breaking a group down and building it back together as a unit.
That was precisely what Payton wanted.
The Saints who went through Jackson together included Brees, Bush, Colston, Jahri Evans, Strief, Deuce McAllister, Will Smith and several others who would eventually form the nucleus of the greatest stretch in franchise history.
At the time, nobody knew that.
They were simply a football team coming off a 3-13 season, with a new coach, a new quarterback and an enormous amount of uncertainty.
Even Drew Brees wasn’t completely Drew Brees yet. He was still recovering from the devastating shoulder injury suffered in his final game with San Diego. Payton later admitted that Brees wasn’t yet 100 percent. The Saints weren’t particularly good during that preseason, either. Brees himself later remembered how exhausted the team was from the physical nature of the Jackson camp.
The results reflected it. New Orleans finished the preseason 1-3.
None of it offered much indication of what was coming.
A Manning finally takes the field at the Vet
Then came August 26. For Peyton Manning, this wasn’t just another preseason stadium.
His dad had history here. Before Archie Manning became the first great quarterback in Saints history, he was a legend at Ole Miss. And in those days, a lot of the Rebels’ biggest games weren’t necessarily played in Oxford. They were played in Jackson. Archie went 7-1 at Veterans Memorial Stadium during his Ole Miss career and also played a high school all-star game there.
Now his son was walking onto the same field. Peyton had grown up hearing stories about Archie’s games in the old horseshoe-shaped stadium. On this night, Archie was even in the building, working the Saints television broadcast. And Peyton made sure the Manning family left with another good memory.
The Colts quarterback carved up the Saints’ defense during the first half. Indianapolis scored on three of its first four possessions. Manning found another New Orleans native, Reggie Wayne, for a four-yard touchdown to open the scoring. A 25-yard Shane Andrus field goal made it 10-0.
Then Manning directed the type of drive that would become almost routine during his Hall of Fame career, 13 plays, 74 yards, methodical and controlled. Rookie running back Joseph Addai finished it with a one-yard touchdown.
Indianapolis led 17-0. Manning’s night was finished. His final numbers: 14 completions in 25 attempts, 165 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions.
For the first time since 1970, a Manning had played at Jackson’s Veterans Memorial Stadium. And he’d looked right at home.
Nobody knew what Jackson was building
That’s what makes the game more interesting 20 years later. The box score itself isn’t particularly memorable.
Colts 27, Saints 14.
A preseason loss. Nothing more.
Except look at the names again.
Drew Brees. Peyton Manning. Reggie Bush. Deuce McAllister. Reggie Wayne. Marques Colston. Joseph Addai. Sean Payton. One future Hall of Fame quarterback was playing in the stadium where his dad had starred. Another future Hall of Fame quarterback was trying to get comfortable with a new offense, a new coach and a shoulder that had nearly changed the course of his career.
And an entire Saints organization was trying to figure out what it was going to become. Less than a month later, the Saints finally walked back into the Superdome. They were 2-0 when they did.
Steve Gleason blocked a punt against Atlanta, Curtis Deloatch recovered it for a touchdown and the Dome erupted in one of the most memorable moments in NFL history. New Orleans went 10-6, won the NFC South and reached the NFC Championship Game.
Brees threw for 4,418 yards that season. Colston went from seventh-round pick to one of the NFL’s best rookie receivers. Bush became one of the league’s most electric young players. Payton won NFL Coach of the Year.
And suddenly the franchise that had spent the previous year wandering from stadium to stadium had an identity. The Saints had come home.
But part of the story belongs to Jackson
The Payton-Brees era will always belong to New Orleans. As it should.
Its defining image is the Superdome. Its defining night came in Miami when Brees held his son beneath falling confetti after the Saints won Super Bowl XLIV. But the foundation was laid somewhere else. It was laid on sun-baked practice fields at a small Division III college in Jackson, Mississippi. It was laid during exhausting two-a-days when Colston was an unknown seventh-round draft pick, Jahri Evans was a fourth-round rookie from Bloomsburg and Brees was a free-agent gamble with a damaged shoulder.
It was laid while Sean Payton was still trying to convince an entire organization to believe in his way of doing things. Twenty years ago on August 26, that strange summer ended with 58,228 people packed into Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium.
Peyton Manning walked onto one of his father’s old fields and beat the Saints.
Drew Brees threw two interceptions.
Reggie Bush lost a fumble.
The Saints fell to 1-2 in the preseason.
On paper, there wasn’t much reason to believe anything special was happening. That’s the funny thing about history. Sometimes you don’t recognize the beginning until years after it has already happened.
And for the greatest era in New Orleans Saints history, part of that beginning happened in Jackson, Mississippi.
For a collection of Photos from that game. Click here: 2006 Saints vs Colts game | Flickr
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