I was wrong.

I knew that New Orleans had the ability to win this game and that it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they pulled it off. The only scenario that I couldn’t foresee was New Orleans winning in a blowout. Now a 14-point win kind of looks like a blowout, but to anyone who watched the game it obviously wasn’t.

This was a game that came down to New Orleans’s players executing better and their coaches coaching a hell of a lot better. I did not agree with Sean Payton’s play call on fourth down (that was straight out of the 2009 Goal line UW Football playbook), but I disagreed with the super-conservative, going nowhere run plays that Indy called after stuffing New Orleans at the goal line (and if Peyton Manning gets credit for calling all of the plays throughout the game, I won’t let him off of the hook there).

However, I do view one particular play that completely shifted the momentum and eventually gave the game to New Orleans.

Here’s the setup:

Score: 10-3 Indy

Second quarter, Indy has the ball after New Orleans went on an 11-play 59 yard drive that took 6:02 and ended in a 46-yard field goal (Indy has yet to touch the ball in the quarter). First and 10: Manning passes to Joe Addai for 9 yards (who had a phenomenal game running for 77 yards on 13 carries and 1 TD and caught 7 passes for 58 yards). Second and 1: Joe Addai thrown for a 3-yard loss. Third and 4: Manning hits Pierre Garcon in the hands, in stride and he could have run for days… and he drops it. Fourth down. Time elapsed: 1:20. I thought right then that the play would haunt Indy for the game.

On New Orleans’s next possession they hold the ball for another 12 plays for 68 yards and 6:25, but Indy held them on the aforementioned goal-line stand. Indy gets the ball back, goes nowhere while holding the ball for 1:03. New Orleans gets it back, goes 26 yards in 5 plays and gets back the three points that they left on the table when they went for it on fourth down and go into halftime trailing Indy 10-6 and feeling pretty awesome about themselves for Manning and Co. to two three-and-outs on successive possessions.

Even though New Orleans didn’t grab the lead until just over five minutes left in the game, I felt like they had Indy beat. The onside kick was a thing of beauty and a complete onions call by Payton, but that’s not where the game shifted. Garcon’s drop did Indy in. I was sad to see that, too because the guy was playing well (that early touchdown catch he had was fantastic).

But enough about Indy’s failures, let’s talk about how zoney Drew Brees was.

He overthrew a pass to Robert Meachem on their first drive (1-2 on that drive). On their second drive he threw incomplete to Pierre Thomas and then threw two more incompletions to Marques Colston, one of which was just an unforgivable drop by Colston. (2-5 on that drive). Read more at Seattlepi