Darren Rizzi didn't immediately know where his son was Wednesday morning, after his son had spent part of New Year's Eve in the French Quarter with friends.
It became more paramount than it otherwise may have been because when Rizzi, the New Orleans Saints interim head coach, pulled into the parking lot around 6 a.m., he was receiving notifications about the terrorist attack that happened on Bourbon Street a few hours earlier.
The attack left at least 15 people dead and dozens more injured as the driver – identified as 42-yaer-old Shamsud Din Jabbar – ran them down in a truck, and later was killed in a shootout with police. Several explosive devices were found in the truck; the investigation is ongoing.
The Allstate Sugar Bowl, scheduled to be played Wednesday night, was postponed and rescheduled for Thursday.
"I left my house this morning, I went to see if my son was home and he wasn't," Rizzi said. "Then I sat in that parking lot and found out that there was mass casualties, the first thing I did was figure out where his location was.
"And fortunately for me, he was at his friend's house sleeping over. I'm blessed and I'm lucky and I'm fortunate, because there's other kids that didn't go home to their families last night."
The Saints (5-11), preparing for their season finale Sunday against the Buccaneers (9-7) at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., dealt with the news as a collective Wednesday.
"This is a national tragedy," linebacker Demario Davis said. "I don't think that there is a way that you can compartmentalize it. I don't think there's a way that you can truly process it. I think you just try to manage it as best you can, and I think it's to empathize with those who have been impacted and affected the most.
"There's no way you're going to be able to bring justice to the families of someone who lost a father, a mother, a sister or a brother. There's no way that you're going to be able to bring them any type of solace. And so, all you can do is pray for them, try to be there for them as best you can, try to support them, allow officials and those who are in charge of handling these situations to do all the due diligence to get it fixed.
"This is not just a local tragedy; this is a national tragedy. It just happened here, with us."
Safety Tyrann Mathieu, a New Orleans native, very much is familiar with how crowd-dense the French Quarter in general, and Bourbon Street in particular, can become during big events.
"A lot of people come here to have a good time and to be able to experience the culture," he said. "Even locals. I told you guys about when the Saints won the Super Bowl (in 2010) how we all ran down to Bourbon Street.
"You just never think that anything like that could happen. Obviously there's a lot of things you have to deal with, but you never think that a madman is going to come through and run over people.
"New Orleans is a small city, and I think that in some way, shape or form, somebody is affected by it. Like, we all know somebody that knows somebody. I just really send my prayers out and my condolences, and hopefully we can push past this."
Rizzi had two high school football teammates die during the 9/11 attacks and is reminded of it when he hears the words "terrorist attack." He said the billowing smoke from the Twin Towers could be seen from his childhood home in New Jersey.
"I was close to New York for the 9/11 attacks and lost some personal friends, lost some high school teammates, some close family friends," he said. "So any time anything like this happens it always resonates and brings back some memories of any type of terrorist attack that happens in our country."
Davis said the tragedy drives home the point that football is a game.
"Moments like this are what reminds us…it humanizes us all," he said. "And shows you just how fast life can change. When you're a part of this game we're always trying to keep things in perspective. It's always front and center, this game, and all that's going on.
"It's moments like this that make you stop and put things in perspective. Many lives were impacted this morning, and I think it hit us all with a kind of shock. There are so many families that are impacted."
The Saints hope to provide a distraction for the city Sunday.
"It's hard to express my feelings, hard to express my sentiments but I can tell you this, here's what I know: I know that the community we live in – this city, this state – is one of the most resilient, if not the most resilient, in the entire United States," Rizzi said. "That's been proven time and time again with some things that have gone on here over the years and things that the people in this community have had to deal with. I know that they've risen before and they'll rise again and they'll support everybody."
"Every time we line up, we always are playing for family, community, all those types of things," Mathieu said. "I think this week, we'll just kind of emphasize that a little bit more.
"I know a lot of people look to us to kind of make their day, make their week a little better. I definitely think it's part of our responsibility to go out there this week and really represent New Orleans."
