SPECIAL TEAM

MIAMI GARDENS, FLA. -- Mostly in private and occasionally in public, the Saints have tossed around the word "special" to describe the remarkable start to the 2009 season.

Even before the first kickoff, Drew Brees commissioned T-shirts with the word in big block letters across the back -- SPECIAL -- and distributed them around the locker room to teammates.

Now we know why.

If any doubts remained that the Saints are in the midst of one of the truly special seasons in club history they melted in the sultry South Florida heat and white-hot fury of their stunning come-from-behind victory against the Dolphins on Sunday.

Even the most cynical Who Dats must have converted to devout believers after watching the Saints outscore the shocked Dolphins 43-10 in the head-spinning final 30:02 of their 46-34 victory at Land Shark Stadium.

It was their sixth consecutive win by double digits and left them as the lone unbeaten team in the NFC. They are 6-0 for only the second time in franchise history. You have to go back almost two decades to find a better start to a Saints season. The 1991 bunch won their first seven.

"We have a great locker room, a great team and we stuck by each other," running back Mike Bell said. "We had a great attitude coming into halftime. We weren't feeling sorry for ourselves. We came back, persevered, stuck to the game plan and came up victorious."

--- The classic 'trap' game ---

Everyone, including myself, thought this was the classic "trap" game for the Saints. Sandwiched between an emotional victory against the unbeaten Giants and a Monday night showdown against the rival Atlanta Falcons, it seemed the perfect recipe for a letdown. The game was on the road. In the South Florida heat. In a place where they'd never won a game.

And indeed, the Saints opened the game as if they'd spent Saturday night partying on South Beach.

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