The
Superbowl provided the Saints with an exciting match-up
against another offensive powerhouse. The Denver Broncos
had amassed some of the league’s most gaudy statistics
during the regular season and were waiting to spoil the
Saints’ hopes of a repeat. The Saints were aggressive on
offense, despite obvious big-game jitters. Defensively,
the Saints focused on preventing any big plays. Montana
lead New Orleans to an early advantage, but an errant
throw on the Saints’ following drive gave the Broncos a
chance to even the score. The Saints held Denver to a
field goal and followed with another scoring drive to
pull ahead 14-3 as the first quarter came to an end. The
Saints exploded in the second quarter with three more
scores and pushed the lead to a comfortable margin by
halftime. Fighting off several attempts by the Broncos
to mount a late rally, the Saints finished strong 41-13.
Montana accumulated 318 yards passing and 4 touchdowns.
Colston had 7 catches for 95 yards. SS Danieal Manning
had two interceptions. The New Orleans Saints: PFL
Champions Again!
Coach Johnny “Mojo” Beaux offers his thoughts on the
post season, “We feel honored and blessed to be
champions. We think we have a pretty good coaching
staff, but when you look at it...in terms of
probability…its pretty unlikely that any team will
repeat as champions in the PFL. There are just so many
great coaches…it’s really tough to do. We had to take it
one game at a time, as they say, and forget about the
odds. We knew we had to be very aggressive offensively
throughout the playoffs. We just sort of opened it up
and let ‘er rip. We felt it was important to play with a
lead and keep scoring in every game. Seattle is built to
play with a lead and the other two, Philadelphia and
Denver, can score in bunches… so we just kept attacking.
Defensively, we added some pressure packages that helped
us out. We were a little soft at times this year, so we
wanted to smack ‘em in the mouth. We tried to amp it up
on both sides of the ball for the post season.”
The Saints averaged 34 points a game in the post season,
up from a league leading 27 in the regular season. The
defense allowed an average of 11 points per game over
three playoff games. The Saints averaged 461 yards of
total offense and allowed only 285. Second year
quarterback, Colt Montana passed for four touchdowns in
both of the Saints’ final two games, a league high for
playoff games since the restructuring three seasons ago.
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