Mickles: Saints show another side in comeback

• By SHELDON MICKLES
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Oct 27, 2009 - Page: 1C

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MIAMI — Through the first five games of their season, the New Orleans Saints did a lot of things.

They won the first two games with a powerful offensive display, for which they’ve become known, and the next two with a pressure-driven, ball-hawking defense, which they sorely lacked the past few years.

Then, proving they could do both at the same time, they muscled up on both sides of the ball to overpower the New York Giants a week ago.

But Sunday, they might have learned a whole lot more about themselves, trailing on the scoreboard for the first time this season — and trailing big — before putting it all together in a 46-34 bouncing of the Miami Dolphins.

No one had to tell them what they had done after outscoring the Dolphins 43-10 in a span of 28 minutes, 9 seconds to erase a 24-3 deficit. Likewise, no one had to tell them what this could mean down the road in a long, 16-game season.

The result wasn’t going to be understated.

“It’s a huge win. … It could be a season-defining win,” linebacker Scott Shanle said as players breathed a huge sigh of relief. “That was big, and it says a lot about the character of this football team.”

After breezing through the first five games, the Saints were challenged on both sides of the ball. It had to be a big shock to the system for a team that hadn’t been really pushed around and still had some questions to answer.

One of them was what would happen when they faced some adversity — especially on the road against a good, if not great, team.

“Obviously, if you don’t have to be behind, you don’t want to be behind,” Shanle said. “But this was a test we haven’t faced yet, and the way that we responded, we couldn’t be happier. We talk about finishing strong, and we did that today.”

Indeed, finishing strong was big. A 22-0 run in the final quarter after the Dolphins took a 34-24 lead with three seconds left in the third quarter was just part of an impressive second-half performance by the Saints.

How they got to that point was an amazing feat in itself, which should answer many of the remaining critics and doubters.

Last season, they took heat for not having a running game or a defense. Those concerns, too, were shot down Sunday.