It’s Day Eight since the New Orleans Saints have won their first ever Super Bowl, and the celebration continues.
Peter King of SI.com raises a very valid point in his Monday Morning Quarterback column: Is the partying potentially screwing up the team’s preparations for the 2010 season?
As King points out, the Saints already were five weeks behind the 20 non-playoff teams. With the celebrations still happening, will it screw up the Saints for their first season as defending Super Bowl champion?
“I’ve heard that, about all the celebrating and how it will affect us,’' G.M. Mickey Loomis told King. “Good question. I don’t know. But this is the first time for this city, and it’s special, obviously. So special. We want these moments to last as long as they can. The celebration is so intense right now, and we wouldn’t have it any other way, because this city and this franchise deserve it. We’re going to celebrate hard. And when we get back to work, the one thing we’ve shown the ability to focus on is the task at hand. If you try to put it behind you too soon, you’ll always look back and think, ‘I should have enjoyed it more.’''
Of course, if they wait to long to put it behind them, they’ll always look back and think, “We should have realized that another football season was coming.”
One thing that the Saints could be doing as part of the ongoing party is giving plenty of people in Louisiana a chance to see and touch the Lombardi Trophy. A Superdome security officer suggested that it be taken to each of the state’s 64 parishes, and Loomis plans to pass the idea along to owner Tom Benson. Coach Sean Payton also told King that he’ll consider allowing the players to take it for a day.
It might be a good idea to let safety Darren Sharper get his crack at it now, since we’ve got a feeling that some other team will overpay him in order to capture some of the fumes of the Saints’ special season.