The obvious connection between New Orleans and Buffalo dates back more than 60 years.As popular — but perhaps not entirely true — legend has it, Buffalo wings were invented at the Anchor Bar in 1964, when the owner doused some chicken parts with Frank’s RedHot Sauce and served them up with celery and a side of bleu cheese dressing.This offseason, the Buffalo Bills decided to cook up another north-south collaboration.And they laid it on thick.Since the day the Bills named Joe Brady head coach, they have promoted his relationships with former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton and quarterback Drew Brees, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday.“I got a master’s degree at Penn State, but I got a doctorate in New Orleans,” was a line Brady said the day he was introduced as the Bills’ new head coach and which he repeated often along the national media circuit.While finishing his master’s degree in educational leadership at Penn State, Brady entered the NFL as a Saints offensive assistant in 2017 and 2018 before joining LSU’s staff as passing game coordinator and helping the Tigers win the 2019 national championship. It was a solid curriculum vitae for the NFL’s youngest head coach.But would it be good enough for Buffalo to recreate New Orleans’ syllabus?Brees was a deity in New Orleans, and by the time he retired, he held the NFL record for career passing yards and ranked second in touchdown passes and completion percentage. Yet during Brees’ 15 years there, New Orleans won only one Super Bowl (2009). It never returned to the big game, and failed to make the postseason six times.The club had so much money committed to its franchise quarterback that it struggled to assemble a comprehensive roster. The Saints went 7-9 four times during a five-year span in which Brees led the NFL in passing yards four times, averaging 5,074 yards and 37 TDs per season.Then again, maybe a single Lombardi Trophy would satisfy Bills fans.Bobby Hebert didn’t take the classes, but he knows all the professors and has dissected the lessons.“Under Drew Brees and Sean Payton, they should have won or gone to at least three Super Bowls,” said Hebert, the legendary Saints quarterback from Cut Off, La.“I guess you can say they underachieved. It just goes to show how hard it is to win the Super Bowl, the ultimate. The Bills better take advantage of Josh Allen.”Early this offseason, Brady repeatedly mentioned being “from the Sean Payton tree.” The comment entered a pantheon of “Hey, did you know” jokes among local reporters alongside former Bills overachievers Ryan Fitzpatrick attending Harvard and Chris Hogan starting out as a lacrosse player.“Look, I was a coaching assistant, right?” Brady said. “I was bottom of the barrel, sleeping at the office, loving life. But I got an opportunity to learn everything from him, and there’s no way in hell I’d be sitting in this chair right now if I didn’t get that opportunity to be his coaching assistant.”Brady said he’s going to keep calling plays because he has seen Payton be successful at it. Brady hired two coordinators away from Payton, who has been the Denver Broncos’ coach since 2023. The first was offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, who also spent 14 seasons with Payton and the Saints, followed by defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard. Brady’s senior adviser, former head coach John Fox, was the New York Giants’ defensive coordinator in 2001 and 2002 when Payton was their offensive coordinator.“But the biggest thing that I learned along the way,” said Brady, “is that if I’m not myself, it’s not going to work. If I try to just, hey, pick up, ‘Oh, this is what Coach Payton did’ and take it somewhere else, that’s not going to work. That’s important, that I have to be me, and I think the great coaches that I’ve been around have been comfortable in who they are.”Brady made an impression on Brees, who said he “wasn’t surprised” when Brady left New Orleans and won a national title on LSU’s staff, working with future NFL stars Joe Burrow, Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase. After that amazing season, at just 30 years old, Brady began interviewing for NFL head coaching jobs.“I think his demeanor, his personality is one that, as a quarterback, you really feel like you can relate to him,” Brees said. “He’s really built the system around the guys that he has. He’s going to be able to do a lot of creative, innovative stuff there.“Sean was brilliant in so many ways. He was brilliant in the way he narrowed the focus for the team week in and week out. He was brilliant in the way that he managed the coaching staff and helped develop his coaches to go on and be play callers and head coaches elsewhere. A lot of guys who have coached under Sean Payton would give him a lot of credit for a lot of things and say they learned a whole lot.“And, back in those days, Joe Brady probably was supporting Pete Carmichael in ways that he is probably now supporting Joe.”Joe Brady served as LSU’s passing game coordinator and wide receivers coach during the team’s national championship-winning season in 2019. (Brett Davis / USA Today)Hebert knew Brady way back when.Hebert, who turns 66 this month, remains a New Orleans fixture. He has been immersed in Saints and LSU football as a sportscaster there for 25 years. His Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame bio calls him “the most successful quarterback in team history,” greater than Saints icon Archie Manning, until Brees came along. Hebert was born on the bayou. He was a state-championship high school teammate and Northwestern State roommate with — and is a cousin of — Brady’s LSU boss, Ed Orgeron.“People don’t realize: Joe Brady gets a lot of credit, but he wasn’t calling the plays,” Hebert said. “Brady had a lot of input, but Steve Ensminger was the one really running that LSU offense when they were having the greatest season ever in college football.“What Joe Brady would do is help out Ensminger in the red zone and with certain plays and on third down. Ensminger would, for Brady to get his feet wet, let him call a few series. But Ensminger is a humble man, so he doesn’t demand the credit he deserves.”That said, Hebert predicted Brady will prove to be a good hire for Buffalo. The “Cajun Cannon” noted that Brady’s learning curve was aided by a disappointing-but-educational stint as the Carolina Panthers’ offensive coordinator and then by his re-emergence with Allen and the Bills. Hebert said he sees many positive similarities between Brady and young Saints coach Kellen Moore.As for any Saints redux, Hebert avoided that nasty NFL voodoo.“The year they won the Super Bowl, that wasn’t even the Saints’ best team,” Hebert said. “The best team was in 2011. They became the new Greatest Show on Turf, better than those Rams teams. They were No. 1 in a number of offensive categories.”That Saints team was upset by the San Francisco 49ers in the second round. New Orleans surrendered a 17-point lead in the second quarter and committed five turnovers, but took a pair of leads within the final five minutes, the last with 1:37 left. They didn’t survive.Then, there was the “NOLA No-Call” at the end of the 2018 NFC Championship Game.“Look at Dan Marino: ‘Oh, he’s just a rookie, he’ll be back.’ Look at Joe Burrow, who got there and lost and now might never get back,” Hebert said. “It’s hard.”Despite having an all-time great at the most critical position for 15 years, the Saints’ front office struggled infamously with the salary cap, frequently cutting serviceable veterans and constantly restructuring contracts to comply. When they signed Bills left guard David Edwards in March for $61 million over four years, stunned media and fans noted the deal included no void years, ubiquitous since long before Brees retired after the 2020 season.Throughout the late winter and spring, Brady and Bills football boss Brandon Beane leaned into messaging that it will be difficult to acquire or re-sign top-shelf players because of Allen’s heavy contract. Last year, Allen signed a six-year extension worth $330 million, with $250 million in guarantees.“It’s our job to find different ways to offset (Allen’s) salary,” Beane said at the NFL combine, “but we believe when we line the ball up in September we’re going to have a team that we feel confident in and go chase a division, which is your ticket in, and, if not, at least be good enough — like last season, we didn’t win the division — to get in and still go make a run.”New Orleans fans would say all the hassle and losing seasons during Brees’ tenure were worth the price.The Big Easy will rejoice when Brees takes his place in Canton this weekend. Fans will relive the glorious memories that Brees, Payton, and the rest of the Saints conjured. The Super Bowl XLIV victory became a defining sports moment after Hurricane Katrina destroyed so much.Payton called the indelible onside kickoff to open the second half against the favored Indianapolis Colts. Brees took MVP.Brees would be a Pro Football Hall of Famer without the championship; he broke too many important records to insist upon a Lombardi Trophy for validation. Allen seems on track for a bronze bust too — with or without a Super Bowl appearance.Since the day Brady was promoted to head coach, he has spoken with reverential envy of the bond between Payton and Brees, hoping to replicate it with Allen while also acknowledging that, to get there, Brady must become his own man.Along the way, one Lombardi Trophy might be enough.“Every decision this organization makes, it’s with the thought of Josh Allen and the players in mind,” Brady said at his introductory news conference in January. “I’d be crazy not to. I was a part of incredible organizations in New Orleans, surrounding around Drew Brees, and there wasn’t a decision that was made without Drew Brees being thought about, talked about and making sure you understood. … It was important that he was involved in it because he is the leader of this organization, and the weight that he has on his shoulders is something that I can’t even imagine.“Everything I think about is trying to find ways to put (Allen) in position to have success because that’s all I care about with him. Josh Allen’s the best player in the world, and I have to grow, right? Part of me growing, that’s going to allow him to be a better version of himself. I’m so excited to continue this journey with him. I have so much love for that man right there. All I want is for him to get everything that he deserves. That’s all I do it for.”