Champion Coach: John Whalen

John Whalen

2K8 SUPER BOWL XXIII
Denver Broncos 13  New Orleans Saints 41
11-5                        13-3
 

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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