Well after letting his WR twist in the wind for two days after his post game comments, Sean Payton has admitted the truth. Marques Colston’s pass was not a strange move at all but was a pre-planned play. Via the Times-Picayune:
“We’re probably maybe a play early from it, but with no timeouts, we’d kind of seen something on tape, Marques has got a pretty good arm,” Payton said. “You know, hindsight, a play where he could have caught it, stepped out and then maybe a Hail Mary to the end zone.
“But it was a play we had put in a week and a half ago, prior to this game, which was a deep throw to Marques and then across the field to Cadet. So, yeah, he wasn’t freelancing.”
So there you have it. It was planned from the start. Now it makes sense why it looked like Colston didn’t even look to get out of bounds. Had that worked though, we’d be talking about one of the great playoff game finishes ever.