WhoDat!656

More later in the column on the Saints, but let’s focus on the two-point conversion by the Saints that tied the game with Washington and sent it to overtime, a game New Orleans won 34-31. After rallying to within 31-29 and needing the two-point conversion, coach Sean Payton took a moment to think of best practices. Every Friday, the Saints practice two-point plays or short-yardage plays they plan to use in the game, and they practice against the first-team defense. This Friday, they tried tight end Coby Fleener coming across the formation left to right, fast, on a jet sweep, with Drew Brees faking the ball to Fleener as he sprinted left and then turning and pitching to the left to running back Alvin Kamara, who would have only one escort in front of him, tight end Josh Hill.

On Friday, the defense stopped Kamara cold. “We’ve had that play up [in the game plan] for three weeks,” Payton said Sunday night. “But when it gets stopped in practice, you think about it a little bit. But here we were, and I gravitated to Kamara. I wanted the ball in his hands.” Amazing, really. The 67th player picked in the draft, and Kamara had earned the trust of Payton and the staff by Week 11, so much so that, in the biggest play of the game, Payton risked the ball being in his hands.

And at the snap, after the fake to Fleener, here came the perfect Brees pitch to Kamara, and he ran left, toward the pylon, and Hill swept away the single Washington defender who didn’t take the bait with the misdirection by Fleener, and Kamara scored. That has to be so rewarding for a coach and for a team, to see a play you love but that didn’t work when you tried it in practice, and then having enough faith in it to call it with a vital game on the line. I love that call.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/11/20/lo...eter-king-mmqb

"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."