WhoDat!656

Just before the 2015 season, Michael Mauti was a Minnesota Viking. ESPN staff writer Ben Goessling filed a story on Mauti from Vikings camp:

The Minnesota Vikings linebacker was starting his sophomore year at Mandeville High School in August 2005, as a promising player on a team that wasn’t expected to be very good. He’d played in the school’s Jamboree game in Chalmette, Louisiana, on the southeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain on Aug. 26 of that year. His teammates were buzzing over the possibility that a hurricane might cancel school the next Monday.

“We were all celebrating,” Mauti said. “And we came to find out that stadium we played in was under 15 feet of water.”

Goessling lets Mauti finish the story:

“I got out of practice for that Monday night game, and that was the loudest I’ve ever heard any stadium,” he said. “I get goose bumps just thinking about it. That was the most moving football moment I’ve ever witnessed — and I’ve been a part of a lot. People were crying before the game. That was one moment I’ll never forget. For a couple hours, people forgot about the fact they didn’t have houses to go back to. They just wanted to get their minds off of it. And that’s what the Saints brought them that year. Besides them winning the Super Bowl, that was the best moment I think I’ll ever witness.”

And the Vikings cut him, and the Saints signed him, and at the precise moment when, thanks to the trade rumors and apparent lack of talent and the meltdown in Philly, Sean Payton seemed ready to run out the clock on New Orleans, this kid does that?

Maybe it’s nothing, but you don’t believe it’s nothing and neither do I, at least here today in the afterglow. Delvin Breaux has gone from meme to shutdown cornerback in a month. Drew Brees has a shoulder again. A defense full of untested children battered one of the NFL’s best offenses only days after being ripped apart. On the sideline, Sean Payton smirks knowingly.

Steve Gleason’s blocked punt against Atlanta symbolized the survival of a city and region. Maybe — just maybe — Michael Mauti’s symbolizes the survival of a football team.

Survival: What Michael Mauti's Blocked Punt Means for the Saints | B&G

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."