- Super Bowl Championships: 1
- Last Super Bowl Championship: Super Bowl 44
- Claim to Fame: In his time with the Saints, Drew Brees has logged five 5,000-yard seasons through the air. There are only nine of such seasons in league history
- Claim to Shame: It took the Saints 21 years to finally achieve their first winning season; their 20 straight seasons without a winning record is an NFL record
In 1966, the New Orleans Saints become the league’s 16th franchise. When the team began play in 1967, John Gilliam brought back a 94-yard touchdown return on the opening kickoff of their first regular season game.
Unfortunately, the team would be mostly irrelevant until the late 1980s and didn’t win a division title until 1991. After a 12-4 record in 1992, the Saints would only have one more winning year (2000) until 2006.
But 2006 marked the start of a new era in New Orleans. Still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city was looking for hope and rookie head coach Sean Payton and newly acquired QB Drew Brees more than delivered.
The Saints won their first game in the newly repaired stadium, Brees led the league in passing, the team finished the regular season 10-6, and won the second playoff game in franchise history.
Only a few years later (2009), the Saints appeared in their first Super Bowl, where they would defeat the Colts 31-17.
With Brees and Payton still around, the Saints had a successful 2018 season, winning the NFC South with a 13-3 record. But the season will mostly be remembered for the heartbreak they suffered in the playoffs, for the second straight year.
After coming ten seconds short of an NFC Championship appearance in 2017, the 2018 Saints were undone by a blown pass-interference call in the NFC Championship game. If the refs get the call right, Brees and company would have been the ones losing to the Patriots in Super Bowl 53. (JK, JK.)
Brees is now on the wrong side of 40, but the Saints remain a well-oiled machine with playmakers at every level on both sides of the ball. If karma is real, New Orleans will get the bounces and calls this year and contend for their second Super Bowl title in team history. Sports betting in Louisiana is now live for Saints fans, so make sure to lock in those future bets once available!
