Sean Payton said it. He meant it. Nobody can deny it. And history supports it.
"We’ll probably never get over it," the Saints coach said of his team Sunday, in a bleak press conference following an NFC championship game that, realistically, was stolen from them by a blatantly missed call.
The Raiders, all things considered, never got over the Tuck Rule Game 17 years and one day earlier. A decade and a half from now, there might be a nickname for the atrocity the Saints experienced that will become a part of the game's lore and will haunt them indefinitely.
It will be their version of the Tuck Rule Game. And, of course, the Rams’ version of it, too. The Patriots were never the same, either, and neither was the NFL.
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The Patriots kicked off minutes after the Saints stalked dejectedly and angrily off the Superdome field after the 26-23 overtime loss to the Rams — the Patriots in their eighth straight AFC title game, their 13th in 18 years, trying for their ninth Super Bowl trip and their sixth Lombardi Trophy.
All dating back to Jan. 19, 2002, when the Tuck Rule saved Tom Brady and the Patriots and doomed Jon Gruden and the Raiders in a snowy divisional-round game.
So no one can pretend one call can't turn a franchise on its ear and slam the door on its dreams. Nor should anyone pretend it was just another call, that they all even out, that there was still time for the wronged team to overcome it and win.
Like with the Tuck Rule, an officiating decision negated a play that, barring a miracle or catastrophe, was the lone difference between winning and losing. The argument that the Saints should have still won the game in overtime is too convoluted to engage, for a simple reason: correctly whistle Nickell Robey-Coleman for pass interference, or head-to-head contact, or both, on Tommylee Lewis, and the Rams never touch the ball again.
Payton and the Saints can't be begrudged their gloom or anger. Unlike their elimination via the Minneapolis Miracle last year, their fate was decided not on their mistakes, but by an entity entrusted in interpreting the rules correctly, something out of their control.
That's the pain the Raiders suffered when their lock-down of their AFC title game berth in 2002 was blown away by referee Walt Coleman’s review.
Instead of their trip to Pittsburgh for a chance to play in Super Bowl 36, it was the last game of Gruden’s first stint as Raiders coach. They went to the Super Bowl the next year, but they have not won a playoff game since, have only made the postseason once, and may now have played their last game in Oakland at all as they head to Las Vegas in 2020.
It's hard to find a more obvious example of franchises landing on opposite escalators since then. The same goes for single horrifically missed calls having that effect … until Sunday night in New Orleans.
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As Payton pointed out, Sunday's non-call ended this version of the Saints, arguably the best since their Super Bowl team nine years earlier. This collection of players won’t be duplicated again. Drew Brees will be a year older and a year closer to retirement.
Shaking off last year's loss, or the one in 2012 in the final seconds to the 49ers, was no easy task. Shaking off an egregious officiating mistake might really be as impossible as Payton claimed.
And where the Rams go from here? It’s not a stretch to see this boost them into an era of dominance for the next five years … or 10 … or 18.
It has happened before.
