As Connor Barth’s game-winning 47-yard field goal soared through the Superdomes’s uprights, a large collective gasp could be heard across the state of Louisiana and much of southern Mississippi. It was the kind of gasp — equal parts horror and disbelief — that often accompanies shocking events before they can be processed and accepted as reality.

While last week’s Dallas disappointment had been the low point of a historically high-flying season, the reaction it produced would be more accurately described as a sort of communal groan. Sure, (almost) nobody thought the Saints would drop a game to the dysfunctional circus the Cowboys seemed to have become, but in the end, they were still the Cowboys, and that carries a certain traditional cachet that in retrospect made the loss seem marginally acceptable.

Let me explain. The psyche of Saints fans — and by extension the entire New Orleans community — suffers from the same sort of Murphy’s-Law-ism that crippled New England baseball fans for 86 years and still haunts their Chicago counterparts. Years of losing bred the mentality that losing was the ultimate expected outcome of any given season. In short, anything that could go wrong would, because it seemed it always did.

In Boston and Chicago, this was born out of an inherent inferiority complex centered on New York and its Yankees. When the Cubs or Red Sox would lose to the Yankees, it was not and is not a good thing, but it isn’t a surprise, because both communities had constructed their self-image around their underdog status. For down-and-dirty New Orleans and its Saints, the glamorous Dallas Cowboys would be the football equivalent. Sure, the Saints are (were?) having a great season, but it was somewhat appropriate for the perfection to end against America’s Team.

This, however, is not the case with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team that, until Gruden Bowl 2002, was the only franchise that could match the Saints in terms of historic futility. The dream 2009 season had been forcing New Orleans, a city that had for many years lovingly referred to its football team as the “Ain’ts”, to redefine how it thought about that same team, and for that matter, their city and themselves.

For Saints fans, it will be tougher to deal with the loss to the lowly Bucs than the one to the vaunted Cowboys.

To have the once-perfect season be further derailed by the Buccaneers — a franchise once infamous only for its creamsicle-colored uniforms — feels like having the magic carpet ripped out from underneath you. New Orleanians now have to confront the startling possibility that the incredible team wearing the black and gold laundry really has just been the Saints all along.

Is this attitude an overreaction? Probably. The Saints playoff position was relatively secure, while the too-young-to-know better Bucs were playing an emotional game for the future of their head coach. The Saints turned the ball over and had big letdowns on special teams, problem areas that we’ve known about for a while. By any and all accounts, they are still one of the best teams in the NFC and probably the NFL, which is more than New Orleans has been able to say since, well, ever.

There are still plenty of reasons for optimism in the Crescent City. Unfortunately, the season no longer seems as predestined for glory as it once did.

-- NICK PERUFFO