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USA Today
10 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
40 days until Saints season opener: Every player to wear No. 40
From Dalton Hilliard and Mike Bell to Delvin Breaux We are down to a 40-day wait until the New Orleans Saints take the field for their 2025 regular season opener at home against the Arizona Cardinals. Rookie seventh round choice Fadil Diggs is currently in possession of the No. 40 for the Saints. Diggs is trying to become the 19th player in New Orleans franchise history to wear that number during the regular season. Here is the complete list of who preceded him. Saints' History of No. 40 Earl Gros was the first to put on a No. 40 jersey for New Orleans, but did so for only one game. Hoyle Granger was the first to wear it for an entire season but was only a Saint through the 1971 campaign. Of the 18 players who have worn No. 40 with the Saints, 17 of them did so for two years or less, with 13 of those wearing it for just one year. Terry Schmidt was the first player to keep 40 for more than a season, the first one to be drafted by the Saints to wear No. 40, and also the first defensive player to wear it. Schmidt was with the Saints for two seasons and led the 1974 squad with 4 interceptions, returning one for a touchdown. Dalton Hilliard was a Round 2 choice, 31st overall, from the LSU Tigers in the 1986 NFL draft, the highest drafted player by New Orleans to wear No. 40. Hilliard had a fantastic eight-year career as a Saint. However, he only wore 40 during his 1986 rookie season before switching to his more-familiar No. 21. As a rookie, Hilliard had 138 offensive touches for 532 yards and 5 scores. Robert Massey was also a Round 2 pick, selected with the 46th overall choice by the Saints in the 1989 NFL draft out of North Carolina Central. Massey had a promising start to his career, intercepting 5 passes for an outstanding 1989 New Orleans defense. He was only with the Saints for two years, however, before going on to standout years with the Phoenix Cardinals and three other teams through 1997. Brian Milne arrived as a free-agent addition in 2000, which would turn out to be his only year with the team and last of a five-year NFL career. Milne split time at fullback during the 2000 season, rushing for one score, and was also a strong special teams performer. It was there that he was part of one of the most iconic plays in franchise history. The Saints were holding onto a thin 31-28 lead over the St. Louis Rams in a 2000 wild-card playoff game. Milne would recover a fumbled punt late in the fourth quarter to preserve the victory, the first postseason win in New Orleans history. Mel Mitchell was a fifth-round choice by the Saints in the 2002 NFL draft. More notably, Mitchell is the only player to wear No. 40 with the Saints for more than two years, suiting up for three years and 44 games as primarily a special teams contributor. Of the nine offensive players to wear No. 40 for New Orleans, none wore it for longer than one season. Running back Mike Bell had a strong 2009 in the backfield rotation during the team's Super Bowl XLIV title run, finishing second in rushing yardage. He wore No. 21 that season, only wearing 40 for four games after being signed late in 2008. The story of Delvin Breaux is one of courage and resilience. A star at McDonogh 35, Breaux broke his neck during a game and was unable to play collegiately at LSU. Instead, he'd rehabilitate his injury and starred for the Louisiana Bayou Vipers before going on to be one of the best players in the CFL with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. From there, Breaux's unlikely journey to the NFL continued when signed by the Saints in 2015. Breaux instantly earned a starting job and started all 16 contests that year. He was a standout corner on an otherwise bad defense, shutting down some of the league's finest receivers and leading the Saints with 3 interceptions and 19 passes broken up. A broken leg that was misdiagnosed by team doctors in 2016 limited Breaux to only six games and hastened the end of his NFL career the following year. He'd return to the CFL as an all-star but would have undoubtedly had a longer stint as a standout with his hometown Saints if not for the blunders of the medical staff. Since Delvin Breaux, only two players have worn No. 40 for New Orleans in the last eight seasons, doing so for a combined 11 contests. Fadil Diggs now gets his shot at an edge rusher spot where the Saints are desperate for talent and production.
USA Today
15 hours ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Countdown to Kickoff: Fadil Diggs is the Saints Player of Day 40
Diggs has the attributes the New Orleans defense needs on the edge The New Orleans Saints will kick off their 2025 regular season just 40 days from today. They'll do it at home against the Arizona Cardinals under new head coach Kellen Moore. Wearing No. 40 for the Saints at the moment is rookie edge rusher Fadil Diggs. Our Saints Player of the Day, here's a closer look at Diggs as he tries to become the 18th player to wear No. 40 during the regular season in team history. An offensive and defensive standout at Woodrow Wilson High School in New Jersey, Diggs was the Gatorade New Jersey Player of the Year as a senior. The Texas A&M Aggies won the battle for the four-star recruit. However, Diggs saw little playing time in 2020 or 2021. He'd work his way into more reps in 2022, managing 3 sacks and 5 tackles for loss. He'd increase that production with 11 stops for loss and 4 sacks in 2023, but would transfer to Syracuse at year's conclusion. Diggs blossomed for the Orange, leading Syracuse with 7.5 sacks, 14 stops for loss, and 3 forced fumbles. The Saints finally grabbed Diggs off the NFL draft board at pick No. 254, just three selections before the end of the draft. Despite his late draft status, Diggs could grab a legitimate role in the New Orleans defense. New defensive coordinator Brandon Staley is expected to employ more 3-4 concepts, meaning the Saints will need more athletic rushers along the edge. New Orleans got only 17 combined sacks and 27 tackles for loss from their edge rushers/defensive ends last season. Carl Granderson and Chase Young return as the probable stand-up rushers for Staley, but there is no proven skill behind them for depth. Listed at 6-foot-4 and 257 pounds, speed off the edge is a Diggs strength. Diggs will compete against undrafted rookie Jasheen Davis, Jonah Williams, and disappointing 2023 Round 2 draft pick Isaiah Foskey for reps at the position. If he can improve his instincts against the run and expand his pass rush moves to create consistent pressure, Fadil Diggs could be a late draft steal for a Saints defense desperately seeking a young and disruptive force.
News.com.au
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
US rapper Mack Maine announces son's tragic death as tributes pour in
Mack Maine has announced the death of his son. The 'Tapout' rapper, who has collaborated with hip-hop greats like Lil Wayne, Future and Nicki Minaj, took to Instagram to reveal that his young son Isaiah, also known as Zeke, died earlier this month from a fatal seizure. He was 20, TMZ reports. 'Been trying to build up the strength to put up this post since last night so bear with me,' Maine, 43, began on Monday. 'On July 16th I received a call that my son Isaiah (Zeke) passed away at his home in California from a seizure,' the New Orleans native continued. 'I'm still in shock and still processing the fact that he's gone. Still confused, still questioning life and why my child and not me.' Maine, who was named president of Lil Wayne's record label Young Money Entertainment in 2009, went on to call fatherhood 'one of the greatest gifts' in life. He wrote that his son's passing has been a 'pain I've personally never felt before.' 'The experience and bond with you and I brought me purpose,' Maine captioned several photos of his late son. 'YOU were my biggest inspiration and were the reason I got out of the bed when everyone else snoozed.' 'Your smile brightened my dark days as you were my SONshine,' the record exec continued. 'Your soul was made of innocence and your heart was pure.' Monday also marked the Always Strapped rapper's 43rd birthday and the second anniversary of his father's death. Maine asked that his fans 'hug the ones you love' and 'tell them you love them.' The rap label exec, whose real name is Jermaine Anthony Preyan, ended his touching tribute with a shoutout to both his late son and dad. 'To Zeke I love you and I know I'll see you again,' he wrote. 'To my Pops I miss you big dawg and I know you met Zeke on the other side with open arms.' 'I vow to continue to make yall proud I just ask yall continue to walk with me and pick me up when I fall … I need the strength …. Until we meet again … LOVE,' Maine concluded. Many of Maine's fans and peers offered their condolences. 'I don't even believe what I just read,' Nicki Minaj, 42, wrote. 'This can't be real.' 'I love you so much,' she continued. 'You guys raised the most incredible young man. He was such a perfect boy. I have no words to express what you must be feeling. No words.' 'We are praying for your whole family, Mack,' the singer concluded her message. 'We love you so much.'
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘There's New Orleans before and after': revisiting Hurricane Katrina in a new docuseries
Earlier this year, NFL fans from across the country descended on New Orleans for the Super Bowl. But even as the Big Easy rushed to put its best face forward for the big game and quickly turn the page from a New Year's Eve attack on its famed tourist district, there was no way of concealing the derelict homes, watermarked buildings and other ravages of Hurricane Katrina. 'On the surface, New Orleans is still the New Orleans of our imagination, where there's Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and you're drinking in the middle of the day outside,' says the Oscar-nominated director Traci A Curry. 'But for the people of this place, the people who know it, there's New Orleans before Katrina and after Katrina. A lot of us who experienced it as spectators think of it as something that happened to America – and it wasn't.' Curry's solo directorial debut, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, re-examines the epic storm 20 years later. The five-part series, which was made for National Geographic and counts Ryan and Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian as producers, isn't a requiem in the vein of When the Levees Broke – Spike Lee's superlative series that was just one of many works that informed this project – Curry says. Rather, it's a tragedy thriller told through forensic analysis. The biggest jump scares come in the hindsight revelations. The first episode provides a refresher on Hurricane Pam – the multi-agency, worst-case scenario planning exercise that was conducted a year before Katrina and essentially predicted everything that would happen, down to the reports of violence breaking out across the city. In Race Against Time, the clock runs down quickly while counting down the hours until the storm makes landfall, and then ticks slowly on for days as storm victims and lifesavers wait for 'the cavalry to come'. While bingeing the five-hour series, a two-year production effort, I found myself edging from horrified to heartbroken to furious as opportunistic politicking and rashes of misinformation sabotaged rescue efforts time and again. With a mix of home video and archival video footage (Curry is a former cable TV producer), the docuseries confidently stitches together a range of perspectives on the mushrooming calamity – from city leaders to emergency managers to residents who saw their lives and loved ones washed away. 'Initially our team combed through the hundreds of hours of archival material, identifying Katrina survivors who we found compelling, in the hopes that we might track them down,' Curry says. 'There were quite a few people we were unable to find, and some we found only to realize they had passed away.' Viewers will be heavily invested in the plight of Shelton Alexander – a spoken word poet who rode out the storm inside the Superdome and recorded the entire experience; a lot of his digicam footage made the final cut. 'I was fully equipped, with three batteries charged up,' he says. 'It was one of those things where I was like, I don't know what's about to happen, but I do know the water is going to come.' Race Against Time is not a story told from the top down. Former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, who was made a scapegoat for the Katrina aftermath, was one high-level authority figure that the production team pursued for the film – but ultimately he declined to be interviewed. Also left out is Kanye West's George W Bush slam or other impressions from pop culture that might reframe the disaster through that lens. Any digression in that direction, tempting as it surely must have been, probably would have distracted from Race Against Time's central thesis: that Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were born from a series of compounding failures, starting with the failure to protect Louisiana's coastline. Ivor van Heerden, a respected marine scientist who warned the public and government officials about the region's potential for a devastating hurricane long before Katrina hit, blames the booming oil and gas industry for hollowing out the wooded wetlands that once gave New Orleans some natural cover. That left the city's levee system, the slapdash work of the US army corps of engineers, to absorb the brunt of the wind and storm surge. But long before those barriers gave way to river and lake water that wound up submerging 80% of New Orleans, Nagin could have helped himself and so many others by not waiting until the 11th hour to evacuate the city – essentially leaving New Orleans' many elderly, infirm and poor residents scrambling. And yet: as shockingly bad as Nagin was in the moment, he still has nothing on Mike Brown, the smug face of the inept federal response. In one damning email chain unearthed in the series, it's revealed that Brown was literally dining out in Baton Rouge while storm victims and first responders went hungry. Worse, Brown had the nerve to relate his frustrations about New Orleans evacuees contributing to long restaurant wait times and local traffic. Twenty years on, there's still no forgiving Brown – but Race Against Time does extend a measure of grace to some Katrina crisis managers. Police superintendent Eddie Compass certainly didn't help the situation by telling the media that snipers were shooting at rescue helicopters. But even that huge blunder becomes somewhat easier to appreciate once you see Compass himself as storm victim who was only reacting to the game of telephone that disrupted the information chain when the storm knocked out power throughout the city. 'One of the things I said to the team early on is that we really want to make sure we approach everyone as a human being in the series,' Curry says. 'By the time we get to episode four, there's a lot of state abuse of force and violence against citizens.' Curry also goes to lengths to show how the Katrina narrative became perverted. Many TV news outlets covered the fallout from Bourbon Street and waited dutifully for the scenes to snap into focus. When their cameras picked up on people breaking into stores for food, clothes and other supplies, Katrina went from being a human story about an unfathomable crisis on American soil to an excuse for Brown and right-leaning commentators to scold Black New Orleanians for looting businesses and damaging property. Desperation that seemed so palpable to those watching from afar was somehow lost on the actual news gatherers who should know it when they see it. 'There's a clip I think in episode four that I remember watching in real time of Wolf Blitzer as images of masses of Black people [are on screen] and he goes, 'They're so poor. They're so Black.' And yes, there were a lot of poor, Black people – but it just felt so dehumanizing and just deindividuated Black suffering. I really wanted to dismantle that, like, no, these are individuals with a life, with a story, with family, with feelings, who experienced a loss.' Race Against Time doesn't turn away from strong imagery. There are shots of lifeless bodies and talk of dying babies, but none of it is ever offered up for entertainment's sake – hardly a given in the documentary game these days. 'NatGeo was mindful that staying through five episodes can be a big ask for viewers,' Curry says. 'But overall they were very supportive of my intention to tell the story in a way that did not feel exploitative of the Katrina survivors or sensationalize the story in any way.' Eerily, the clock doesn't stop running once Race Against Time is through. The final episode is careful to point out the welter of climate crises that have continued to strike the US since Katrina's passing, and even includes footage from the recent Los Angeles wildfires taken by a producer who lost her home. Each disaster is a reminder of not only how ill-prepared we are for such events, still, but also of how hesitant we remain to reckon with the root causes that are only going to make future weather catastrophes that much more devastating – especially in Black and low-income communities, which are still suffering in the aftermath of Katrina. 'I hope this series makes us realize the urgency of recognizing that these things are going to continue to happen,' Curry says. 'I know this is sort of a dirty word these days, but we need to think about equity in the way we approach preparation for disasters. Because if we center the needs of the most vulnerable people, it's going to help everybody.' Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premieres on 27 July on National Geographic and will be available on Disney+ and Hulu afterward This article was amended on 28 July 2025 to correct the name of one of the film's producers. He is Sev Ohanian, not Alexis Ohanian as stated in an earlier version.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Mack Maine announces son has died aged 20 from seizure
Rapper Mack Maine took to social media on Monday to mourn the tragic loss of his 16-year-old son Isaiah as result of a seizure. The New Orleans native, 43, posted a lengthy emotional statement on Instagram revealing that his teen son passed away as result of a seizure less than two weeks ago. 'This is a pain I've personally never felt before,' Maine said, 'but I'm still trusting and believing in God's plan and God's will and mercy.' Maine, a longtime friend and associate of rapper Lil Wayne, prefaced the moving statement in noting that he had 'been trying to build up the strength to put up this post since last night.' Maine, whose real name is Jermaine Anthony Preyan, wrote that 'On July 16th I received a call that my son Isaiah (Zeke) passed away at his home in California from a seizure.' The musician was candid in dissecting the tragic situation, as he said he was 'still in shock and still processing the fact that he's gone;' and 'still confused, still questioning life and why my child and not me.' Maine added that he was comforted by the spiritual implications following Isaiah's premature passing. 'I know I am/was his father while he was here in the flesh but now he's ascended to rejoin OUR Father God in the spirit and his ancestors who also loved him dearly like his grandfather (my dad) and his grandmother,' Maine said. Maine thanked his late son for providing him 'with one of the greatest gifts [he's] ever received, Fatherhood!' He continued: 'The experience and bond with you and I brought me purpose… YOU were my biggest inspiration and were the reason I got out of the bed when everyone else snoozed. 'Your smile brightened my dark days as you were my SONshine. Your soul was made of innocence and your heart was pure. Since July 16th your village has been crushed and we're hurting.' Maine was supported by a number of notable names in the hip-hop community, including Nicki Minaj, 2 Chainz and Tyga. 'I don't even believe what I just read,' said Minaj. 'This can't be real. I love you so much.' The Super Bass songstress had kind words in remembering Isiah, calling him 'the most incredible young man' and 'such a perfect boy.' Others in the music industry rallied around Maine with words of kindness and support Said Minaj, 'I have no words to express what you must be feeling. No words. We are praying for your whole family, Mack. We love you so much.' Rapper 2 Chainz said in a comment in the thread, 'Bru im so sorry to hear this, praying for you and the fam I love ya bru.'
