From the Stacks - Mary Emrick
Trio of Texts Salute the Saints
Super Saints by The Times-Picayune
Home Team by Sean Payton and Ellis Henican
Coming Back Stronger by Drew Brees with Chris Fabry
“Who Dat!” In the Miss-Lou, sports fans agree to disagree about our college teams. Ole Miss, Mississippi State, LSU…all SEC teams and all are fierce rivals. But when it comes to the NFL, about 90% of us can be in agreement! The New Orleans Saints is our team, and we can commiserate for or celebrate our team in unison.
It’s September and the Pro-football action is just beginning. Early in the season is when we enjoy reflecting on past games. Winning the 2010 Super Bowl Championship will be hard to top, so let’s continue now to enjoy the glow from last season. Three books will help us do that with accuracy.
The Times-Picayune’s publication of Super Saints: A Salute to the 2010 Super Bowl Champions will take sports fans through all sixteen season games, the divisional playoff game, the NFC championship game, and Super Bowl XLIV. The book, filled with colorful pictures of the action, gives statistics and dialogue that will transport the reader to a joyous time in Saints football. Throughout the game re-caps, chapters are inserted about the Saints’ owner Tom Benson, Saints’ head coach Sean Payton, quarterback Drew Brees, and safety Darren Sharper. Included also is a chapter dedicated to us…the loyal fans. The Times-Picayune staff compiled this book as a tribute to a team that was long overdue for the glory days.
The story of the 2010 Super Bowl Champions would not be complete without detailed information about the head coach, Sean Payton, and the star quarterback, Drew Brees. Both Brees and Payton have provided us with autobiographies that give the insight we desire about the two men. The two biographies have a common thread, “a city and a team rescuing each other.”
Home Team: Coaching The Saints and New Orleans Back to Life by Sean Payton and Ellis Henican, begins in Naperville, Illinois, where Payton lived as a high school student. He began his football career there, playing for the Redhawks of Naperville Central High. He mainly sat on the bench until his senior year. Sean Payton describes his desire to “make it big in the pros,” following college football at Eastern Illinois University. As a player, that never happened; but as a coach, which was his ultimate career goal, he moved up through the ranks, beginning his coaching career on the college level. His first college coaching job was as a graduate assistant at San Diego. From there he moved around from university to university until in 1997 the Philadelphia Eagles gave Payton his first job in the Pros. It wasn’t until 2006 that he accepted a job “head coaching,” and that was with the beleaguered New Orleans Saints. The remaining chapters of Home Team describe the rebuilding of the Saints team and coaching staff, the rebuilding of a city, and the restoration of morale among the fans.
Coming Back Stronger: Unleashing the Hidden Power of Adversity by Drew Brees with Chris Fabry is an inspirational story of a young man with exceptional abilities who picks himself up after a devastating football injury and moves with his young wife to a city that believes in his ability to “come back stronger.” Drew Brees as a free agent had to choose between the Miami Dolphins and The New Orleans Saints. Everyone was betting on Nick Saban’s Dolphins. Even Drew Brees was favoring the Dolphins before he interviewed with The Saints.
The Saints and Sean Payton believed in Brees’ talents as a leader and told him they would work with his offense and install it to his liking. The Saints organization wanted him, and the fans already loved him. It took an unintended detour through “Katrina” devastated neighborhoods, where the houses were off their foundations and boats and cars were found in unlikely locations, for Drew to be attracted to New Orleans and its people and to realize the help that they needed. Nick Saban did not have the same faith Sean Payton had in Brees’ ability to make a comeback as a top quarterback. This fact about Saban made the decision for Brees to accept The Saints’ offer easier.
Coming Back Stronger will amaze and inspire. Drew Brees’ perseverance in the midst of adversity leads us all to the understanding that with faith, determination, and heart all things are possible. Upon completing the book you will have a respect for Drew Brees, not for his football prowess alone but for his life off of the football field spent with family and friends.
I am not one normally to pick up or read sports biographies, but these two books I immensely enjoyed. All three of the books mentioned in this review would make great gifts for any New Orleans Saints fan.
