NEW ORLEANS — Before facing the N.F.L.’s last unbeaten team on Sunday, Saints receiver Michael Thomas settled in for a final film review. He cued up the clip he wanted. He watched it in awe. He felt inspired.
Thomas, at last, was ready to hide a cellphone at the bottom of a goal post.
One at the bottom of both goal posts, actually, because how awkward would it have been if he scored the touchdown that finally stifled the Los Angeles Rams, 45-35, on the most productive day of his N.F.L. career, and the phone he had secreted was 120 yards away, all alone, with no one to flip it open and pretend to answer?
It could have been really awkward. As awkward as the Rams’ defense looked on that play, with rushed communication at the line of scrimmage and with cornerback Marcus Peters leaping in vain to deflect the pass from Drew Brees that – like most of his other throws Sunday, like most of his other throws this season or across his career – was centimeter-perfect.
Thomas caught the ball in stride en route to a 72-yard score with 3 minutes 52 seconds remaining, and he kept running, holding his left hand to his ear as he pointed at teammate Austin Carr with his right, until he reached the stanchion, bending to lift the padding and free the phone – just as he saw Saints receiver Joe Horn do, in that grainy 15-year-old video on YouTube, a few hours earlier.
“I live for games like this,” Thomas said.
The jubilant mood at the Superdome seeped into the, umm, well-hydrated crowd, and no doubt later into all quarters of the Crescent City, which can now claim – among many other superlatives – the best football team in the N.F.C., if not the entire league.
In winning their first eight, the Rams had triumphed in snowy Denver and gloomy Seattle and plenty of California sunshine, but not amid a mighty din, against a mighty quarterback and a defense that in the second half sagged until it didn’t.
After dispatching the Rams (8-1), after throttling them in the first half and fending them off in the second, the Saints (7-1) now own the critical head-to-head tiebreaker. They’re positioned to earn the top seed in the N.F.C. playoffs, and if there is a delicious rematch come January – as there could be in the A.F.C. as well, between New England and Kansas City – the Saints will be oh so gracious to host it.
“That team is a team we’ll have to see again,” Saints defensive lineman Cameron Jordan said of the Rams. “And I’m glad they have to come back to the Dome. In my mind.”
The Saints have won their last seven – remember when Tampa Bay and Ryan Fitzpatrick swatted them in the season opener here? – and it is as if every week they make a series of decisions. First, that they will win. Next, how they plan to win. Then they win.
In each of the last four weeks, New Orleans has defeated a postseason contender. It walloped Washington. It stunned the Ravens in Baltimore, scoring 17 fourth-quarter points. It toppled Minnesota in Minneapolis, where Brees threw for all of 120 yards, his fewest in a full game since joining the Saints in 2006.
To beat the Rams, though, would require a certain kind of style, aggressive and unforgiving, and Coach Sean Payton knew it. Across the sideline he could see a tandem that just might have reminded him of the one that has fueled the Saints’ prolific offense these last 13 seasons, Payton and Brees, their relationship the paragon among play-calling coaches and their quarterbacks.
With Coach Sean McVay’s innovative system producing opportunities for Jared Goff to distribute the ball, in various ways, to players like Todd Gurley, who began Sunday with more touchdowns (15) than eight other teams, the Rams score – a lot. Under Payton, the Saints’ attack morphs every game – with new calls and formations and shifts, based on the opponent – into what Brees, after the Saints flogged the Giants on Sept. 30, characterized as an entirely new offense.
This week, that offense demanded a flea-flicker. On 4th-and-1, Payton summoned a pass for Brees – to catch. He also watched the Rams, with the score at 14-14 early in the second quarter, try a fake field goal that his defense thwarted.
“When a game is going in that manner,” Payton said, “you call a game a little differently.”
This is how Payton called it: as if, for a day, the Saints and Rams had infiltrated the Canadian Football League, where teams punt on third down. Improving his candidacy for the league’s M.V.P., Brees threw for 346 yards, recording his 22nd career game with at least four touchdowns and no interceptions.
In the first half, the Saints recognized the benefit of Brees’s giving the ball to Alvin Kamara, so he pitched it to him, shoved it in his belly, flipped it to him in the flat.
Trying to spot Kamara at the line of scrimmage, McVay said last week, was akin to finding Waldo. The first place McVay could have looked fir Kamara on Sunday was the end zone. Kamara scored three touchdowns before halftime.
“We ain’t looking at nothing but the track we’re on,” Kamara said. “So there’s no derailing this train, really.”
The teams’ first four drives ended in touchdowns. It took until the game’s 14th possession for the first punt, by New Orleans. The Rams did not punt until late in the fourth quarter, unable to match the Saints’ go-ahead field goal after scoring 21 consecutive points, and Brees, with New Orleans leading by 38-35, got the ball at his 25.
“It’s like giving the ball to Michael Jordan with the game on the line,” said Saints linebacker Demario Davis. “Don’t worry about it. We are in good hands.”
On 3rd-and-7 from the Saints’ 28, Brees dissected the Rams’ bracket coverage and, at the snap, saw two defenders flock to Kamara. That meant Thomas was single-covered. That meant the Rams were in trouble.
As afternoon stretched into evening here Sunday, Mark Ingram called Thomas a legend, and Kamara marveled at his prescience. Two phones? Unbelievable. Tight end Ben Watson asked Thomas, 25, whether he was old enough to remember Horn’s caper here in 2003. Yes, Thomas told him. Watson’s next question: Where did you get a flip phone?
“I think Joe Horn left it or something,” Thomas said.
Thomas did not confirm that he had hidden the phone himself. He did not deny it, either. He did acknowledge that the pass was thrown to him, that he caught it, and that he was pleased to have set the franchise mark for most receiving yards, 211 on 12 receptions.
Eight games remain for New Orleans, which means Thomas has eight more chances to break that record. Eight more chances for the Saints to stymie the charging Carolina Panthers in the N.F.C. South and to ward off the Rams, who still must face Kansas City in Mexico City, Philadelphia and Seattle at home and the Bears in Chicago.
“This was just one game,” defensive lineman Aaron Donald said.
Indeed it was. But if there is another one between the Saints and the Rams, it is now bound to be here. Thomas is calling it.
Follow Ben Shpigel on Twitter: @benshpigel
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