NEW ORLEANS // Inside the dome where the city fell and rose again, a roar bounced again and again off the metal walls: "Reg-gie! Reg-gie! Reg-gie!" It came on the touchdown run where Reggie Bush skipped from a sure tackle before scoring. It came after the punt when a phalanx of Arizona Cardinals chased him across the turf, lurching in vain at his black jersey.
This was the game Bush was supposed to have regularly when he arrived in New Orleans in 2006 to help salvage the city from its post-Hurricane Katrina despair. Yet it was the one that for a number of reasons, many of which had to do with injury, he had not. At least until Saturday afternoon, in the NFC conference semi-final against the Cardinals, when he was everything he was always supposed to be in the Saints' 45-14 victory.
For weeks, the Saints' coach, Sean Payton, had a feeling about Bush and about this game. His star running back's recovery from microfracture surgery on his right knee last January had been slow. For much of the year Bush struggled to be anything like the player the Saints believed he would be when they took him in the draft back in 2006. The recovery from such an injury was slow, Payton realised. And as the season drew toward an end, he saw something in Bush, a small burst of speed. A sign things were getting better.
One day in December he went to the team's general manager, Mickey Loomis, and said: "I'm going to get him healthy." So Bush rested those last few weeks of the year as the once-dominant Saints stumbled into the post-season, NFC South champions but suddenly vulnerable. Until Saturday, when Bush lived up to those high expectations. With Bush running free and dancing around defenders, it was a game like so many the Saints had played in the first three-quarters of the season: an offensive barrage mixed with key turnovers forced by the defence. Even after Arizona took a 7-0 lead on the game's first play there was a calmness on the sideline. A calmness that was to become an onslaught that overwhelmed the Cardinals.
Drew Brees threw for 247 yards and touchdowns to Jeremy Shockey, Devery Henderson and Marques Colston, and, most critically, Bush scored on an 83-yard punt return and a 46-yard run. The Saints led 35-14 by half-time and shut out the Cardinals in the second half as Bush finished with 84 yards rushing, 24 yards receiving and 109 yards on three punt returns.
