New Orleans Saints in Tampa tickets

The New Orleans Saints are one of the NFL's great turnaround stories. A longtime underdog franchise that waited two decades for its first winning season, New Orleans rose behind coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees to win Super Bowl XLIV after the 2009 season, the first league championship in franchise history. Saints tickets at Caesars Superdome deliver one of the defining home-field experiences in football, a domed cauldron of black and gold where the Who Dat Nation turns every home game into a New Orleans-sized celebration.

The Saints joined the NFL as an expansion team in 1967, and the name came straight from the songbook: the franchise was named for "When the Saints Go Marching In," the jazz standard synonymous with New Orleans, with local sports entrepreneur Dave Dixon timing the NFL's franchise announcement for All Saints' Day, November 1, 1966. Success took its time. New Orleans went 20 consecutive seasons without a winning record or a playoff berth, a stretch that hit bottom in 1980, when a 14-game losing streak to open the season had fans wearing paper bags over their heads and rechristening the team the "Aints." The early lore still resonates, though. John Gilliam returned the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown in the first game in franchise history, Tom Dempsey's 63-yard field goal in 1970 held the NFL record for more than four decades, and the Dome Patrol linebacking corps anchored four playoff teams under Jim Mora. The first winning season arrived in 1987, the first playoff win in 2000, and everything accelerated when Sean Payton and Drew Brees both arrived in 2006. Brees set what was then the NFL single-season passing record with 5,476 yards in 2011, threw a touchdown pass in 54 consecutive games to break Johnny Unitas's long-standing mark, and joined Rickey Jackson, Willie Roaf, Morten Andersen, and Sam Mills among the five Saints who built Hall of Fame careers primarily in New Orleans.

The Saints have played in the Superdome since 1975, after spending their first eight seasons at Tulane Stadium, and few venues pair with a city's identity the way this one pairs with New Orleans. The building holds roughly 73,000 fans, and the franchise's Ring of Honor, starting with inaugural honorees Archie Manning, Rickey Jackson, and Willie Roaf, runs along the Terrace Level fascia. Game days lean full-on local. The fleur-de-lis, a Louisiana symbol that serves as the team's primary logo, appears everywhere you look, "When the Saints Go Marching In" doubles as fight song and city anthem, and the Who Dat faithful bring a party spirit that New Orleans does best. Division matchups against the Atlanta Falcons, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Carolina Panthers raise the temperature the most, and the Falcons game is the one circled first on every Saints fan's calendar.