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MIAMI -- Contrary to what you'll be hearing for the next few years, Sean Payton isn't that smart. If he were, he would have waited a little longer before dropping a bomb on his kicker."Hey, we're running it," he told Thomas Morstead.
It was the Onside Kick Heard 'Round The World. The only thing wrong with the call was that there were still 20 minutes left in halftime.
"I wish he'd told me at the end," Morstead said.
Instead, Morstead had an entire performance by The Who to get nervous. But like almost everything else Payton did Sunday night, it worked to near perfection.
Morstead's kick squibbed off Hank Baskett's hands, the Saints recovered, Drew Brees worked his magic, the Saints won, and angels wept.
"Things just kind of snowballed," Garrett Hartley said.
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For that we can thank Payton, the most brilliant coach in Super Bowl history. At least, when he wasn't the dumbest coach in Super Bowl history.
He was called both Sunday night, which shows you how easy it is to second-guess. The hard part is first-guessing, which is why Payton is paid a lot more money than all those who were calling him an idiot at the end of the first half.
The Saints got stuffed when they went for it on fourth-and-goal in the second quarter. Had Pierre Thomas scored, Payton would have been called a gutsy genius.
Such judgments shouldn't be based on the outcome. Would Payton be a dolt if Chris Reis hadn't won the tug-of-war under the onside kick pile?
No, it was a great call either way. It was the first onside kick in Super Bowl history, not counting those in fourth-quarter comeback attempts. In a game where conservatism usually rules, a Super Bowl rookie took the biggest chance of his career. And his team loved it.
"That's the type of team we are. We play with a very aggressive mentality," Brees said. "We play with a lot of confidence. We came to this game knowing we had to play loose and take a chance in order to win."
The onside call looked like a massive risk, but Payton knew exactly what he was doing.
"Sixty-seven percent," he said.
Those were the odds that the call would work. Payton didn't say exactly how he arrived at that, but I wouldn't question his math.
"We didn't feel good about the call," he said. "We felt real good."
That will sound cocky to some, mainly because a lot of things Payton does makes people want to pelt him with snowballs. The words often associated with him are "smug," "controlling" and "Belichick."
That fourth-down call was almost as controversial as the one New England made during the regular season. You remember, the Patriots failed to convert and gave Peyton Manning easy entrance into the end zone.
Belichick was roasted, but the odds said he made the right call. No matter, it's always more fun to bash Belichick than give him the benefit of any doubt.
Like Belichick, there's a method to the way Payton drives people to madness. The only people he's trying to impress are his players. Making the calls he did Sunday night reinforced his team's confidence.
"He's always going to be aggressive," center Jonathan Goodwin said. "That's one of the things we players like about him."
The fourth-down decision wasn't all that damaging, since the Saints held and still got a field goal on the final play of the half. It was one of three 40-yard-plus field goals by Hartley, who wasn't even the kicker most people wanted to talk to after the game.
That was Morstead, who probably thought Baba O'Riley would never end. Part of Payton's thinking might have been to kick it at Baskett. He's married to Kendra Wilkinson, reality TV star and former Hugh Hefner plaything.
Payton probably scouted old Playboy videos and realized Baskett had worse hands than Hefner. Whatever the thinking, it couldn't have worked out better.
"We were just fortunate," Morstead said.
Yeah, there was some luck involved. But it took a coach who knew math and psychology.
If he took chances, Payton knew there was more than 67 percent chance he'd end up looking like a genius.
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