NFL.com Wire Reports

New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton shortened practice by about 20 minutes Thursday in Coral Gables, Fla., trying to ensure that his players will be fresh for Super Bowl XLIV.

Temperatures were close to 80 degrees when the Saints began practice at the University of Miami. Players removed their shoulder pads for the last 40 minutes of the workout.

The Saints will have had two weeks to prepare for Sunday’s game against the Indianapolis Colts, so Payton said he’s not so much concerned about limiting the length of practice as he is with how good his players look when they’re on the field.

“We’re in the second week now and we can do that (shorten practice),” Payton said. “It was a little warm out here. I think you have to be a little careful. Some guys would worry about getting all the plays in. All I was concerned about was getting good work in, and we accomplished that.”

Read the rest of the story and check out a nice video.

By David Nielsen
Scripps Howard News Service
Archive

Editor’s note: For the 21st straight year, our friends at Scripps Howard News Service have spanned the globe to get the Super Bowl picks from some of today’s hottest stars. And yesterday’s. And a few from a couple of days ago. The winner gets the Scripps Howard Super Sage Award trophy.

Out of the more than 100 famous folks who made predictions, 62 believe that the Indianapolis Colts will win Super Bowl XLIV, and 41 picked the New Orleans Saints.

The defending champ, actress and former Miss Panama Patricia De Leon, is going with the Saints — and has a breakdown of the score if it rains and if it doesn’t.

Below are picks from athletes, entertainers, politicians, TV stars — even a former director of the CIA.

Feel free to spy on them.

Want to see what the celebrities picked ? CLICK HERE.

For example….

SHAQUILLE O’NEAL
Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star

New Orleans, 34-23. This is going to be very special for the great people of New Orleans and Louisiana. The Saints have the talent and the resilience to win. Who Dat?

BY DAVID J. NEAL

dneal@MiamiHerald.com

The media got it all wrong two years ago, New Orleans tight end Jeremy Shockey insists. They misunderstood, misinterpreted, missed the point, just plain missed how a former University of Miami tight end felt the last time his team reached the Super Bowl.

Not the Saints, of course, but the Giants, who upset their way through three NFC playoff road games and to a Super Bowl XLII championship after Shockey broke a leg late in the season. This time, he has another injury, a knee problem, but is expected to play Sunday. He probably will enjoy this Super Bowl trip more than the last one.

“I actually have a leg that’s not broken, so that helps me out,” Shockey quipped.

Read the rest of the story here.

Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana’s attorney general said Monday that shops can sell T-shirts with the phrase “Who Dat” and the fleur-de-lis symbol if they don’t make other references to the New Orleans Saints or the National Football League.

Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said he had a conference call with the NFL’s general counsel to discuss cease-and-desist letters that some Louisiana T-shirt makers received from the league. The letters demanded that the businesses stop selling shirts featuring the phrase that’s part of a popular cheer by Saints fans, citing trademark infringement.

“They’ve conceded and they’ve said they have no intention of claiming the fleur-de-lis, which would be ridiculous, or the ‘Who Dat,’ which would be equally ridiculous,” Caldwell said.

Read the rest of the story here.

NFL.com

NFL.com’s Vic Carucci (Colts) and Steve Wyche (Saints) provide a Super Bowl XLIV position-by-position breakdown

Drew Brees

This is Drew Brees‘ moment. He has to try hard not to feel that he must be perfect and he has to remain poised. Brees isn’t going to have many opportunities to hit the big play. He will have to extend plays with his legs and regain the accuracy that slipped him in the second half of the NFC title game.

Peyton Manning

Amazingly, Peyton Manning has taken his game to a higher level in the postseason. He overcame a mammoth challenge by solving the New York Jets‘ complicated blitzing in the AFC Championship Game. He faces another difficult task vs. Gregg Williams’ aggressive Saints defense, but there’s no reason to doubt Manning’s ability to rise to the occasion.

The edge goes to Peyton.

Click here to read the entire story.

By Pat Yasinskas

MIAMI — The interview session with the Saints has just ended at Sun Life Stadium.

I’ve got a tape recorder and a notebook filled with quotes. Saints owner Tom Benson talked for the first time in recent memory. I’ll bring you some highlights of that and lots of other stuff this afternoon when I get to a place where I can write.

Also had a lengthy interview with defensive end Will Smith for a column I’m doing for Friday. Smith is the one prominent New Orleans player who hasn’t really received a lot of attention this year. That’s about to change.

I’ll be back in a bit with lots more.

The story was posted here.

Will Smith is a great player and a great guy, I know we at Whodatnation.com cannot wait to see Pat’s story.  To learn more about Will check out his web site at thewillsmith.com.

By Jerry Izenberg/Columnist Emeritus

January 31, 2010, 7:00AM

Jerry Izenberg, The Star-Ledger’s columnist emeritus, is one of only three daily newspaper columnists to have covered every Super Bowl. That gives him 43 more appearances at the big game than the New Orleans Saints, who will finally step onto center stage next Sunday for Super Bowl XLIV against the Indianapolis Colts. He begins his coverage with this piece.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — There are voices in the wind that ripple through the palm trees here . . . voices that had their genesis in the Land of the Mississippi River . . . voices that tiptoe through the narrow, winding streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter … voices that whisper from the above-ground cemeteries that are as much a part of the city’s unique lore as its garishly dressed local Mardi Gras krewes.

Go ahead and laugh, but don’t even try to tell me you ever dreamed the New Orleans Saints would one day make it to the Super Bowl. The days are long gone of Marie Laveau, the voodoo priestess whose name once stood alone as their city’s signature symbol at a time when chicken bones foretold the future.

There’s a new sorcerer in town. Sean Payton is the name and minor miracles are his game.

His football team gave the citizens of New Orleans a post-Katrina slice of hope in which to believe when the mayor, the governor of Louisiana and, most of all, FEMA could not.

To read the rest of the story click here.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is getting into the “Who Dat” fray with the NFL, asking the state attorney general to look into a possible lawsuit over the ownership rights to the popular New Orleans Saints phrase.

Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin says the governor’s executive counsel contacted Attorney General Buddy Caldwell’s office Saturday.

The call came within hours of the state Democratic Party’s governing body calling on Jindal to defend the rights of Louisiana citizens to use the term “Who Dat.”

Some T-shirt makers have been getting cease-and-desist letters from the NFL demanding they stop selling shirts with the traditional cheer of Saints fans. The NFL claims the shirts infringe on a trademark it owns.

The issue has outraged many residents.

In NFL cities such as St. Louis, where the thrill of victory has become a faint and distant memory, the notion of a week-long football party in February is too difficult to imagine.

A decade ago, it seemed as if trips to the frenzy of Super Bowl week would become a wonderful habit for the Rams. But as time went by, well, things changed. Dynasties were replaced by despair. Consistent success was exchanged for repeated failure, and now a new generation of Rams loyalists (a rapidly dwindling species) are wondering what kind of miracle it will take to get back on top.

Well, then, Super Bowl XLIV ought to do your fatalistic instincts a world of good, because the New Orleans Saints — as star-crossed and woebegone an NFL franchise as there ever was — are descending on Florida this week one game away from an NFL championship.

“People have to pinch themselves because they can’t believe the Saints are going to the Super Bowl,” said Bobby Hebert, the Cajun native son who spent 11 years in the NFL, five as a Saints quarterback. “Some people thought this wouldn’t happen in their lifetime.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Super Bowl-bound New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, a star QB at Austin’s Westlake High School, is the first football player to be featured in a Warner Bros. animated fine art lithograph and celluloid.

"Catch Dat Brees" artwork

The limited-edition “Catch Dat Brees” art salutes the second time in NFL history that a quarterback has eclipsed the 5,000-yard passing mark. The Brees Dream Foundation will benefit from sales of the art—a numbered lithograph or a hand-painted celluloid, each signed by Brees.

Read the rest of the story here.