Payton's coaching clinic makes him true Super Bowl MVP

MIAMI -- After a poor first quarter, Saints quarterback Drew Brees damn near threw a perfect game the rest of the way. He was 29 of 32 for 261 yards and two touchdowns. Of those three incompletions, one was a drop. Another was a spike to stop the clock. Look, I know all of that, OK? No need to belabor the point. He was incredible Sunday.

But as good as he was in the Saints' 31-17 victory against Indianapolis in the Super Bowl -- and he was nearly perfect, as I've said -- Drew Brees shouldn't have been named MVP of Super Bowl XLIV.

Because Sean Payton was MVP of this game.

That's right. The head coach of the Saints was the MVP. A coach has never been named MVP of the Super Bowl, but there's a reason for that: A coach has never been as instrumental on Super Sunday as this coach in this Super Bowl.

"He made some great calls," said one player.

"Everything he did ... it all worked," said another.

And those guys played for the Colts.

The first one was Colts safety Melvin Bullitt. The second one was Colts offensive tackle Ryan Diem. On down the line I could go, quoting Colts player after Colts player expressing his admiration for the way Sean Payton impacted the game. Watch this:

"They kept catching us off-guard," said Colts defensive end Robert Mathis.

"It was a huge play," said Colts defensive tackle Dan Muir. "A huge call."

You probably know that call. It was the onside kick Payton pulled out to start the second half, one of the gutsiest coaching calls in Super Bowl history. Guess wrong in that situation -- trailing 10-6, kicking off from your own 30 -- and the game can get away. If the Colts recover, they're already in field-goal range. A completion or two from Peyton Manning, who finished with 31, and they're near the end zone.

If it fails, it's the kind of call that can destroy a coach forever.

Unless you know something, which Sean Payton did. His film study of the Colts' special teams had shown that the first line of players on the Indianapolis kick-return team would often flinch when the ball was kicked. They anticipated the kick and took a step away from the line of scrimmage, Payton told his players -- as one of them, Pierre Thomas, told me.

"They tend to get out of position," Thomas said. "Coach showed us that and said, 'We're going to call it this week.'"

He even gave the play a name. Payton called the onside kick "Ambush." And at halftime, he went through the locker room and told them Ambush was coming. He even told the offensive line, because Payton wanted the offense ready to go -- physically ready, but also mentally ready -- as soon as the Saints recovered the onside kick.

"That's Coach Payton," said center Jonathan Goodwin. "That's why players love to play for him. He's so aggressive, and he's always thinking ahead."

After the Saints' Jonathan Casillas recovered the onside kick, the offense was ready and it sliced through the deflated Indianapolis defense 58 yards in six plays for the touchdown. The Saints, who had trailed 10-0 in the second quarter, led for the first time all game. It was 13-10.

"Big momentum change there," said the coach -- the coach of the Colts, I mean. That was Jim Caldwell's assessment of the onside kick, which caught his team completely unprepared.

Coaches don't win MVP awards, but an exception could be made for Sean Payton. (US Presswire)

Payton put his mark on this game with a lot more than that onside kick, of course. I'm not trying to take the MVP away from Brees, as good as he was, because of a single call by Payton. There were more calls.

There was even a call that didn't work, a fourth-and-goal play from the 1 that fell short when Thomas slipped to the turf while trying to make a cut upfield. The Saints trailed 10-3, and with less than two minutes to play in the first half, a field goal would have been nice. But Payton was sending a message -- to his team, to the Colts, to everybody.

"We were going to be aggressive," Payton said.

It didn't work, but with Payton calling two timeouts, the Colts couldn't run out the clock and had to punt. So with the ball near midfield and 35 seconds left, the Saints drove into field-goal range and got the three points they would've had if Payton had been conservative on fourth-and-goal from the 1.

But Payton is rarely conservative. And his players love that about him.

"We play with a very aggressive mentality -- we play with a lot of confidence," Brees said. "Our head coach is unbelievable. Not only as an offensive guru, a guy who is a great play-caller, an aggressive play-caller, a confident play-caller -- but a guy who can instill all those things into a player."

The exclamation mark on Payton's coaching clinic came after the Saints scored on a Brees-to-Jeremy Shockey pass for a 22-17 lead with 5:42 left. Payton called for the two-point conversion, as the time and score dictated, and then challenged the ruling on the field that receiver Lance Moore didn't have control of the catch as he reached it over the end-zone line. That challenge worked. The Saints now led by a full touchdown, 24-17, and the seven-point lead became 14 after Tracy Porter's 74-yard interception return for a touchdown with 3:12 to play.

It should be noted that Porter credited the coaching staff for the interception, saying someone on staff noticed how Colts receiver Austin Collie tipped off a certain pass to Reggie Wayne when he went in motion from an inverted formation. Well, that play had the inverted formation. And Collie went in motion.

"It was great film study," Porter said. "The coaching staff did a great job preparing us. ... I saw [Collie] do that, and I jumped the route and the ball came right into my hands."

Great play? Sure. Great coaching? Absolutely.

Best coaching we've ever seen in a Super Bowl.