NEW ORLEANS – The gates to Caesars Superdome opened at 1:26 p.m. local time before the New Orleans Saints hosted the Las Vegas Raiders on Sept. 27. The fans first on the premises calmly walked toward the glass door that leads to the 70,000-seat arena.
Except for one group of young men, who sprinted toward the “Rebirth” statue on the southeast side of the venue that features Steve Gleason’s block of Atlanta Falcons punter Michael Koenen on "Monday Night Football," Sept. 25, 2006 – the Saints’ first game back in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina threatened the very existence of the team in the city. Although the official 20th anniversary has passed, the celebration will take place when the Saints host the Falcons Oct. 5, also on Monday night.
“It’s the play that changed Saints history forever,” said Ian Reddoch, one of the baby faces who darted toward the statue, even though he wasn’t even alive when Curtis Deloatch recovered the blocked punt in the end zone for the game’s first touchdown.
Yet Reddoch, born in 2008, and his friends felt compelled – no, mandated, in the quest for good luck, Reddoch said – to make this pilgrimage to the bronze statue unveiled in 2012 that commemorates a moment that not only spelled the return of a franchise, but the comeback of the city. The play connects a generation of fans who saw the franchise's founding in 1967 to those who weren’t born when Katrina forced the mass evacuations of their parents or were in diapers when Hall of Fame quarterback and franchise legend Drew Brees hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in 2010.
Ro Brown, a longtime New Orleans sports journalist and member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, said that fans will sometimes wonder aloud why the Saints have not constructed a statue of Rickey Jackson or Brees.
“They don’t understand, that’s not a statue of Steve Gleason,” Brown told USA TODAY Sports. “That’s a statue of a moment in this franchise’s history, in this city’s history, that was a tangible signal and something that was just a feeling for all of us that, ‘We’re back.’”
Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm when it made landfall in Louisiana, hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region on Aug. 29, 2005. The disaster was responsible for 1,833 deaths and more than $100 billion in damage, according to the National Weather Service. The most significant wreckage occurred in New Orleans.
The effects of Katrina, and therefore the impact of Gleason’s block, were felt across the world because everybody has a New Orleans story, Brown said.
“And if they don’t, they have a New Orleans wish,” Brown said. “Everybody knows something about New Orleans.”
Mike Ditka coached the Saints for three forgettable seasons (1997-1999). But it was something the Hall of Fame coach said as a TV analyst nearly a decade later, on the morning of Super Bowl 44, that resonated with Brown.
“He said ‘You don’t understand. It’s not just their team. They’re their boys,’” Brown said.
Relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, during that Saints-Falcons matchup 20 years ago, Brown was watching on television with his elderly mother and two aunts. After the blocked punt, Brown looked over at his mother and saw tears streaming down her face.
Inside the Superdome for "Domecoming"
Erin Grayson Sapp, a local historian who has studied the origins of the Saints, was fortunate to have been in the Superdome that night – a scene she says is impossible to forget but difficult to describe. “Deafening,” is the word she comes back to.
Jeff Anding, the Louisiana State Museum executive management officer for marketing and communications, worked for the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau at the time and was closely involved in the rehabilitation efforts to open the city back up to business – and football. He was also in the Superdome, fully functional yet not totally complete, that evening 20 years ago. The Superdome itself was a physical example of the city’s recovery efforts; the structure’s blackened and destroyed roof is a common image associated with Katrina to this day – not to mention the horrible conditions experienced by thousands desiring shelter there during the storm.
People often ask Anding to rate the energy in the dome during the "Domecoming" on a scale of one to 10.
“Fifteen,” Anding told USA TODAY Sports.
The crowd never ran out of steam, from the pregame concert by U2 and Green Day to Gleason’s blocked punt and the first score that took place 90 seconds into the 23-3 Saints victory. ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico cried “Touchdown New Orleans!” followed by more than 30 seconds of silence, as the booth allowed the Superdome cacophony to reach living rooms and bars around the country in its purest form.
Having Sept. 25, 2006, to look forward to was a touchpoint for the entire city “probably like no other,” said Anding, who sat for an interview with NBC’s Peter Alexander prior to Mardi Gras earlier that year. Alexander’s questioning was, essentially, “How can you party in a place where people died? How can you celebrate after this tragedy?” Anding recalled. He responded that Mardi Gras is part of the city’s DNA. Those who died or were displaced would want the celebration to take place.
Most locals love Mardi Gras. Plenty partake in Jazz Fest and other festive, citywide celebrations that help make this place a great American city. The Saints are “part of the DNA of this city, too,” Anding said.
“This was a return to normalcy in a huge way … kind of like an exhale for the city,” Anding said.
Steve Gleason's blocked punt remembered
Saying Gleason’s block was symbolic would be an understatement, according to Grayson Sapp. Saints fans have been passionate about their team since before it existed, in a sense.
Neither the AFL nor NFL had expanded into the American southeast by the mid-1960s. At a time when the civil rights movement was driving drastic change throughout the region, New Orleans felt positive about its racial progress. There was little violence, protest or even pushback to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, but one event in 1965 magnified the barriers that remained in the city.
Football lovers in the city – and there were thousands, based on the attendance for similar exhibitions in the city – assumed that the AFL All-Star Game coming to town in January of that year would be their final audition. But the game never happened. Players, white and Black, unanimously opted to boycott the exhibition after a series of negative incidents upon arriving in the city, including but not limited to being unable to secure taxi rides from the airport, being refused seating at a restaurant and being turned away from a nightclub at gunpoint.
Ticket sales weren’t the problem in New Orleans. Public sentiment was.
“It really was a wake-up call,” Grayson Sapp said.
The walkout gave the city a popular cause to rally behind and a shared reason to openly promote change in the interest of football. That happened “in code,” Grayson Sapp said, as local leaders stuck to the story that New Orleans had always been a progressive and tolerant city. Newspaper ads and billboards with copy reading “Let’s Go Pro!” were pointed reminders.
“Locals knew what it all meant when they were told to impress the leagues,” Grayson Sapp said. "It wasn't ticket drives. ... It meant, ‘We've got to be a hospitable city. And we got to show the NFL that we can host pro football and treat all the players with respect.’”
In 1967, as Saints tickets went on sale for the first time, councilman Moon Landrieu, who later became mayor, said "The Saints are responsible for a new birth in the spirit of New Orleans."
Or rebirth.
New Orleans had to prove its unity to get a team, and the Saints were a byproduct of that togetherness. As the Saints spent the 2005 season on the road – Saints home games were played at the Alamodome in Texas, Louisiana State’s Tiger Stadium and even Giants Stadium in New Jersey – questions swirled about whether Benson would sell the Saints or potentially relocate them to San Antonio.
“And that gives it power. It's everybody's team,” Grayson Sapp said. “So no matter who you are, if you're a Saints fan, we're all one – in a way that I think it takes it to a different level than another city that didn't get their team through this unifying story the way New Orleans did.”
Four decades later, when life in the city had been permanently altered, the Saints and Gleason were the ones to remind everybody of that.
Gleason’s story evolved into one of personal perseverance. In 2011, at the age of 34, Gleason – who played with the Saints from 2000 to 2008 – was diagnosed with ALS. His Team Gleason foundation has provided $55 million for ALS patients and their families to purchase technology, equipment and care services.
“For me, it is a reminder that I am still here … I say this in my book, ‘If I don’t block that punt, I’d be dead,’” Gleason recently told local NBC station WSDU. “That moment connected my life to New Orleans in a way I never could have planned. When the ALS came, this community showed up for us. Twenty years later, I feel their love. And I’m grateful to be here for whatever comes next.”
A moment worthy of a statue
About 12 minutes after the gates opened Sept. 27, the line in front of the “Rebirth” statue to have a picture taken in front of it has dissipated. A stadium worker seeking the shade provided by the bronze Gleason is the closest life form to the monument for some time.
But the people don’t stay away.
“It was the turning point of the franchise,” one person who approached the statue said.
“I cried,” said another.
Corey Singleton grew up seven miles away from the Superdome on the city’s Westbank.
“When Gleason came through and blocked that punt, it was more than that moment … it said something to the city – that we are resilient,” Singleton said. “That we will fight through anything.
“You have it in your blood.”
Vic Tucker lived in Anchorage, Alaska, for 30 years but grew up going to events at the Superdome. He watched the game with the group of Saints fans he regularly gathered with.
“We felt it all the way up there,” Tucker said. “It was quite emotional, even four thousand miles away.”
Saints safety Justin Reid, a Louisiana native, was nine years old on Sept. 25, 2006. Living two hours north of New Orleans, he felt “the momentum shifted… just a beacon of hope.”
“When the Saints are able to even bring a sliver of something to be proud of, a bit of patriotism, back to the city, it’s a really, really big deal,” Reid told USA TODAY Sports. “And I think that play is the epitome of all that.”
In Brees' Hall of Fame speech this August, he summed up that appreciation between fan and team.
“If you love New Orleans, it’ll love you back – there is no truer statement,” Brees said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Saints came home after Katrina. What happened next changed New Orleans
