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By Michael Silver,

MIAMI – Shortly before the start of the third quarter of Super Bowl XLIV, while the 74,059 fans at Sun Life Stadium were rocking out to the raucous climax of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton put on a crowd-pleasing performance in the visitors’ locker room.

“Listen, we’re gonna run ‘Ambush’ to start the second half,” Payton told his players, referring to an onside-kick call the team had practiced repeatedly in the two weeks leading up to Sunday’s showdown with the Indianapolis Colts. “We’re playing this game to win it. We’ve got all the bullets; we might as well use ‘em. So you’d better get on that damn ball and make me look good.”

The Saints howled their approval, then headed back onto the field with a bounce in their step. Trailing by four points against the seemingly indomitable Peyton Manning(notes), New Orleans would be fueled by the audacity of hope as it had all season.

The Colts – and a whole lot of football fans and prognosticators – were about to get fooled, again.

After the Saints recovered Thomas Morstead’s(notes) perfectly executed onside kick, quarterback Drew Brees(notes) drove the team to a go-ahead touchdown and kept right on delivering perfectly placed passes, staking underdog New Orleans to a seven-point lead with 5:42 remaining.

Another series of gambles – by defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who picked the perfect time to call an exotic blitz, and cornerback Tracy Porter(notes), who jumped Manning’s pass to Reggie Wayne(notes) and returned it 74 yards for a game-clinching touchdown with 3:12 to go – put the finishing touches on the Saints’ first championship.

It was New Orleans 31, Indianapolis 17; Chutzpah 1, Conservatism 0.

“We’ve been a team that kind of lived on the edge all year,” Pro Bowl safety Darren Sharper(notes) said in the Saints’ rowdy locker room after the game. “We’ve had great, gutsy calls at the right time. To win a world championship, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Added outside linebacker Scott Shanle(notes), who broke up Manning’s fourth-down, goal-line pass to Wayne with 44 seconds remaining to make the victory official: “It takes [expletive]. Scared money doesn’t make money. Taking risks, that’s been our nature all year. It’s the reason we’re here.”

It’s the reason Payton, as a rookie coach taking over a team that had struggled after a Hurricane Katrina-induced transplant the previous year, was able to convince his players from the start that they had a chance to do something special, leading them to their first-ever NFC championship game appearance in ’07.

It’s the reason Payton, while sitting at home on a Friday night following a second consecutive subpar season last January, made the executive decision to offer prospective defensive coordinator Gregg Williams an extra $250,000 – out of his own pocket – as a means of convincing him to take New Orleans’ offer instead of a similar one from the Green Bay Packers.

“I’d had a few beers, and I called [general manager Mickey Loomis] and told him, ‘Let’s not lose a coach over this’ and offered to kick in the money,’ ” Payton recalled following the team’s overtime victory over the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game two weeks ago. “The next morning my wife said, ‘What did you do?’ I had to call Mickey back and make sure: ‘It’s just for the first year, right?’ But in this day and age, it’s the cost of doing business.” (The Saints reportedly reimbursed Payton for the expenditure midway through the season.)

On Super Sunday, a willingness to take risks was the reason that Payton, unlike Indy counterpart Jim Caldwell, provoked a sense of fearlessness that brought out the best in his players.

“Coach is a players’ coach,” defensive end Will Smith(notes) said afterward. “We love him. He does things that we would do. And we try to have his back.”

Consider the way each coach approached the end of the first half. After falling behind 10-0 in the first quarter, New Orleans had reduced the deficit to seven after the first of three Garrett Hartley(notes) field goals and was a yard away from a game-tying score at the two-minute warning. Halfback Mike Bell(notes) was stuffed for no gain on a run to the right side on third-and-goal, and Payton decided to go for it. The Saints called a similar play for Pierre Thomas(notes), who was blasted short of the goal line by middle linebacker Gary Brackett(notes) and several other Indy defenders.

The fired-up Colts figured to go into halftime feeling mighty good about themselves. But rather than allowing Manning (31-of-45, 333 yards, one touchdown, one interception) to do his thing, the rookie coach, who had yet to lose a meaningful game, called three consecutive runs that netted nine yards, forcing a punt from the Indy end zone.

The Saints got the ball back at their own 48-yard line with 35 seconds remaining, and after three completions and a spike by Brees (32-of-39, 288 yards, two TDs, no interceptions), Hartley booted a 44-yard field goal as time expired.

“That was big,” Payton said. “It was important to get the score back before the half.”

Getting the ball back to start the second half was even bigger. “Ambush” lived up to its name, as Morstead faked a deep kick to his right and swept his leg back across his body with a squib to the left side. The Colts’ Hank Baskett(notes) had a clear shot at the ball, but he misplayed it and it bounced off his helmet as backup safety Chris Reis(notes) squirted in to fall on the ball. Reis momentarily lost it before regaining possession, holding on for dear life until, after about 30 excruciating seconds, an official finally signaled New Orleans ball.

“It seemed like forever,” Reis said. “My forearms were burning afterwards. One ref was saying blue ball, one was saying white ball. One told me to let go, but there’s no way I was going to. [Colts players] were prying my hands away, trying to get it out. But there’s no way I wasn’t gonna come out with the ball.”

Brees put the Saints ahead a little more than three minutes later on a 16-yard screen to Thomas, but Manning quickly restored order with a 10-play, 76-yard touchdown drive, giving Indy a 17-13 lead. The four-time MVP threw a pair of stunningly sublime balls to tight end Dallas Clark(notes) on the drive and seemed to be positioning himself for a second Super Bowl MVP trophy in four seasons.

Williams, naturally, decided to be proactive at the most pivotal time. Facing a third consecutive future Hall of Fame quarterback in the postseason, having already dispatched with the Cardinals’ Kurt Warner(notes) and the Vikings’ Brett Favre(notes), Williams had crafted a game plan based on the premise that Manning must be kept off-balance.

In the first quarter, the Saints played almost exclusively out of a 3-4 formation. They switched back to their typical 4-3 in the second quarter, also mixing in nickel formations. They alternated between these approaches in the third quarter, waiting until the final 15 minutes to unleash a series of exotic blitzes.

Trailing 24-17 after Brees’ two-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jeremy Shockey(notes) and two-point conversion to wideout Lance Moore(notes), Manning took the ball at his own 30 with 5:42 remaining and started methodically marching the Colts downfield, just as hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide expected.

Early in the drive, Saints veteran outside linebacker Scott Fujita(notes) suggested to Williams that he call a “Ram-1” blitz, which would send all three ‘backers and leave Sharper in “Cover 1” as the lone safety. “If you feel comfortable with our coverage on the back end,” Fujita told him, “Ram could get there.”

With Indy facing a third-and-5 from the New Orleans 31, Williams called the blitz, sending Shanle and middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma(notes) to Manning’s right in an effort to force him to throw left. Sharper stayed in the middle, covering Clark on an inside route while Wayne ran an “in.” Porter, having anticipated Wayne’s move based on film study, jumped in front of the Pro Bowl wideout, made the pick at the 26 and raced into the end zone with the third-longest interception for touchdown in Super Bowl history.

“We sent all three linebackers, and we got it out of his hand,” Williams said. “It was a seven-man pressure, inside-over low pressure. We tried to knock protection back and make him make a quick throw. As soon as they’re lining up, I’m looking at [Porter] to see if he sees what I see, and I’m trying to intercept it before he intercepts it!

“There was a step-by-step process. It’s one of Peyton’s favorites. He’s beaten so many people on that same route. Our guys just believed the pressure would be there. Our guys believed [Wayne] couldn’t turn it up top. If [Manning] held it half a second longer, it would have been an avalanche in the pocket, and he would have been down.”

Instead, defensive end Will Smith, who’d pressured the pass with a strong rush off the outside edge, had the pleasure of knocking a future Hall of Famer to the turf as Porter sped by with the sweetest touchdown run in franchise history. “I saw [Manning’s] face right after he threw it,” Smith said, “and I knew it was an interception. And then it got even better.”

It got even louder at Sun Life Stadium, where Saints supporters dominated, and all over the Crescent City, where Fat Tuesday (eight days from Sunday’s game) has suddenly become an afterthought.

As great as Super Sunday night and Magnificent Monday morning would be for the Saints fans who flooded South Beach and Fort Lauderdale Beach to celebrate an unlikely championship, the players knew where the real party was.

“Bourbon Street, definitely,” Fujita said. “I know there’ll be a lot of shirts coming off, that’s for sure.”

Hey, what else would you expect? After all, as Payton showed a football-watching world in an entertaining Super Bowl, audacity and the Saints go together like beads and balconies.