ROUSES_Fall2023_Magazine

By David W. Brown

Pat Swilling still feels that rush when he walks into a football stadium. In fact, says the legendary linebacker, he gets more of a rush now than he did when he played for the New Orleans Saints more than three decades ago. He just looks around in disbelief, honored and overwhelmed that he actually played football for 80,000, 90,000 — sometimes 100,000 people.

“I was there, man,” he tells me. “It is an indescribable feeling to know that you are one of, what, 1,500 guys in the world to get on that field and be a gladiator on Sunday? I don’t know if there is a word for that feeling. Even right now I get chills thinking about it. It’s just that wonderful.” Swilling was one quarter of the “Dome Patrol,” the greatest linebacker corps in the history of the National Football League. The other three members were Rickey Jackson, Vaughan Johnson and Sam Mills. From 1986 to 1992, the four men terrorized the opposi tion and galvanized the New Orleans Saints to achieve what, at the time, were unimagi nable franchise successes. According to the NFL, among the Dome Patrol’s myriad achievements at the time include the fewest points surrendered and most turnovers forced, in 1991; and the fewest points surrendered the following year. Overall, they achieved a second-place ranking in points allowed, at 16.4 per game;

a third-place ranking in allowed yards, at 289.8; a fourth-place ranking with 274 total sacks; and a seventh-place ranking at 123 total interceptions. The NFL reports: “No team held opponents to 200 total yards or fewer in that span more often than the Saints, who accomplished that feat 17 times.” (The nearest team only managed it 13 times.) In addition, the Dome Patrol led the NFL in shutouts‚ which they did six times, tied only with the Buffalo Bills. The group helped take a flagging New Orleans team and give them an overall win count of 62 games, just behind the Bills and 49ers. To give some context to the magnitude of this achievement, consider that Buffalo and San Francisco were power house teams, and played in Super Bowls regularly. “We held teams to under 200 yards of total offense,” says Swilling. “That’s unheard of.” Even that isn’t enough to convey precisely how astoundingly successful the Dome Patrol was. Until 1986 and the Jim Mora

era of New Orleans football, the Saints had never had a winning season. In 1986, the team went into a rebuilding phase, and the following year, the Saints went an aston ishing 12-3 for the season, reaching the playoffs for the first time. Except for 1990, when they went 8-8, the Saints, defended by the Dome Patrol, continued their streak, with winning records every season, and a total of four playoff appearances during the Dome Patrol regime. In 1992, all four members of the Dome Patrol were chosen to play in the Pro Bowl, which never happens. Indeed, 1991 and 1992 saw the Dome Patrol as a unit reach the height of their abilities. It’s like the four linebackers could reach each other’s minds. The Dome Patrol came together quickly, says Vic Fangio, the defensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins, who in 1986 was the linebacker coach for the Saints. “Rickey Jackson was already on the roster that we inherited when we came to the Saints, and then we drafted Pat Swilling in our first draft

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