Author: Chad Calder / Source: The Advocate
Ryan Lemons doesn’t know about the paper bags.
Born just weeks after the New Orleans Saints’ 2010 Super Bowl victory, he’s known only Drew Brees at quarterback, a high-octane offense and a team that, even in a bad year, will at least give you a win for every loss.
Waiting for a streetcar after Friday’s pep rally for the Saints’ NFC Championship game Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams, Ryan’s mother, Shara Stokes, decides to let her son in on a dark chapter in the team’s past.
“The Saints? It was bad,” she explained over the din of a cheerful crowd. “They used to always lose and people still wanted to support them, but they didn’t want to show their face. So they would put a bag over their face at the game and cut the eyes out.”
Ryan stared blankly for a moment, furrowed his brow and shook his head. It just didn’t make sense.
“Yeah, I guess we don’t talk about that,” Stokes said, sharing a laugh with the rest of the family. “Now we’re just excited to be in the conversation, and that we’re not the underdogs. Leave that back there; we don’t want to jinx it.”
Like many younger Saints fans, Ryan is blissfully unaware of the punishingly bad seasons that became synonymous with the Saints teams of the 1970s and ’80s, and the near-winless records some years that would have fans donning paper bags over their heads in protest.
They’ve never known the Saints to have a head coach fired in midseason or hear the team’s on-field effort described by the coach with phrases like “diddly poo.”
William Picket has. On Sept. 17, 1967, he stood with the rest of Cub Scout Troop 256 just outside the end zone in Tulane Stadium for the Saints’ first game ever. Wide receiver John Gilliam returned the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown in front of 80,000 newly minted fans.
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