Ditka to Haslett- Fan Favorite & Franchise Great
- Saints Hall of Fame
Steve Gleason
- Position
- SDefensive Back
- Number
- #37
- Saints years
- 2000–2006
- Era
- Ditka to Haslett
- Franchise
- New Orleans Saints
Honors
- New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame
- Congressional Gold Medal
Why he’s a legend
The legacy
Steve Gleason was an undrafted special-teams player for seven seasons, and then for ninety seconds on 25 September 2006 he was the most important athlete in the United States. His blocked punt on the Saints’ first defensive series in the reopened Superdome — recovered in the end zone for a touchdown — is the moment New Orleans marks as the night the city came back. The statue of it outside the stadium is called Rebirth. Since being diagnosed with ALS in 2011 he has become one of the most consequential advocates for people with the disease in the country, and in 2020 he received the Congressional Gold Medal.
Why he matters
- His blocked punt on 25 September 2006 is the most emotionally significant play in franchise history, and it happened on the first Saints home game after Hurricane Katrina.
- The play is memorialised in bronze outside the Superdome as the Rebirth statue.
- He founded Team Gleason after his 2011 ALS diagnosis, and the Steve Gleason Act, which secured Medicare coverage of speech-generating devices, is named for him.
- He received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2020 — the first professional football player to be awarded it.
- He is proof that a Hall of Fame built only on production would miss what a franchise actually means to a city.
Defining moment
The blocked punt
2006 season
Ninety seconds into the first game played in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, on national television, Gleason came free off the edge and blocked Michael Koenen’s punt. Curtis Deloatch recovered it in the end zone. The building had been a shelter of last resort thirteen months earlier.
Career statistics
Current through the 2006 season
With the Saints
- Seasons
- 7
- Role
- Safety and special teams
Honors & accolades
Championships & enshrinement
- New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame
League awards & All-Pro
- Congressional Gold Medal2020
Career timeline
7 seasons in the NFL, 7 of them in New Orleans.
- 2000New Orleans SaintsSigns with New Orleans undrafted out of Washington State
- 2001New Orleans Saints
- 2002New Orleans Saints
- 2003New Orleans Saints
- 2004New Orleans Saints
- 2005New Orleans Saints
- 2006New Orleans SaintsBlocks a punt on the first drive of the Superdome’s reopeningRetires after seven seasons
Era context
What the league looked like while Steve Gleason played it. Raw totals across eras are not like-for-like.
Ditka to Haslett
1997–2005
The first playoff win, a franchise-altering trade, and then the storm.
- Sixteen-game seasons throughout; the 2004 emphasis on illegal contact re-opened the passing game league-wide.
- The 2005 Saints played no home games in New Orleans, splitting a nomadic season between San Antonio and Baton Rouge.
- Free agency and the cap were fully mature, shortening the typical tenure of a star player with one team.
The Brees & Payton Era
2006–2020
A quarterback nobody else wanted, a coach nobody had hired, and a Super Bowl.
- The most pass-friendly rules environment in NFL history to that point; raw passing totals from these years dwarf every earlier era.
- Sixteen-game seasons throughout, with a 12-team playoff field from 2020.
- The franchise won seven division titles in this span, including four consecutive from 2017 to 2020.
Data & sources
Statistics on this profile are current through the 2006 season.
- A special-teams career does not produce a meaningful statistical line, and this profile does not manufacture one. He is included on the strength of a single play and everything that followed it.
- Who Dat Stats classifies him as a Fan Favorite & Franchise Great — an editorial category of this site, distinct from the official honors listed above.
