MIAMI — The New Orleans Saints kept waiting for the right time to try it. Finally, at halftime, coach Sean Payton decided to pull the trigger.
Trailing Indianapolis 10-6 at halftime of Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday night, Payton didn’t want to let the Colts start the second half with the ball.
So he ordered the onside kick. Kickoff specialist Thomas Morstead got the right bounce with his kick, and after it ricocheted off Indianapolis receiver Hank Baskett, New Orleans’ Chris Reis was on the bottom of the pile with the ball at the Saints’ 42. New Orleans went on to score a touchdown for a 13-10 lead and seized the momentum of a game won by the Saints 31-17.
“We knew we were going to call it at some point,” Payton said. “All week we had practiced that onside kick, and at halftime I just told those guys we would do it. It was a good hit by Thomas. Our guys did a good job in showing a normal kickoff coverage look.
“You know you get a little nervous. There’s a lot going on in the week of the Super Bowl, and the key was the kicker.
“The guys recovered, and we were able to take advantage of it and get seven points, and then it becomes more like a turnover.”
Morstead, also the Saints’ rookie punter, dedicated the play to former Chiefs head coach Frank Gansz Jr., his special-teams coach at SMU who died last year.
“I was praying it would go 10 yards and back up the way it was supposed to,” Morstead said. “I played soccer and can bend the ball a little bit. John Carney (former Saints kicker and now kicking consultant) said, ‘Bend it like Beckham.’
“It was awesome. It bounced off someone, Chris Reis recovered it, and it squirted down his legs. I saw him recover it and tried peeling off some of the bodies on top of him.”
The onside kick turned the game around.
“It was huge,” said Indianapolis safety Melvin Bullitt. “As a special-teams captain, I feel like we didn’t do what we were supposed to do. We always talk about the little things, and that was a little thing that was huge.
“If we would have got the ball right there, maybe on the 40-yard line going in, the game could have gone a totally different way. We would have been up by what, 14 points, almost 17 points, so that was a huge turning point in the game.”
Bullitt said the Colts were caught off guard by the kick.
“They … made a great call,” Bullitt said. “It was gutsy, and it’s the Super Bowl. What do you have to lose but this last game? You might as well go for it. And you see what happened? They got it. The defense didn’t stop them. All the credit goes to them.”
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