SAN FRANCISCO - They say what goes around comes around, that if you live long enough you'll see every role reversed, every flip followed by a flop. But, really, would anyone who watched theNew Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers during their former heydays believe what they're about to witness in Candlestick Park today?

David Grunfeld/The Times-PicayuneTwenty years ago, who would've thought the New Orleans Saints would be the team with a record-setting attack built around a Hall of Fame quarterback orchestrated by a coach considered a mastermind of offense?

New Orleans with a record-setting attack built around a Hall of Fame quarterback orchestrated by a coach considered a mastermind of offense?

San Francisco with the stone wall, sack-happy, linebacker-rich defense constructed by a coach preaching mistake-free football?

The Saints channeling Bill Walsh and Joe Montana? The 49ers summoning the spirits of Rickey Jackson, Sam Mills, Vaughn Johnson and Pat Swilling?

To understand the shock value of this meeting to Saints fans who were watching football when the only Manning in the NFL was named Archie, you have to go back to a time before many of the players on today's field were born, to a time before the birth of the Who Dat Nation.

It was 1987 and the Saints had still not experienced a winning season in 20 years of trying, but that was about the change. Jim Mora's second team shocked the league and ignited bag burnings across The Big Easy by not only having a winning season, but going 12-3 and making the playoffs.

It was the start of a six-year run that made the Saints regularly respected for the first time. Mora's formula was beautifully simple.

He had a stifling "Dome Patrol" defense that could keep teams out of his red zone, and he had an all-time great kicker in Morten Andersen who was money from 40 yards.

So he put together a "no mistake" offense: A quarterback to throw after a strong running game was established.

No risk, no failure. Let the other guys make mistakes.

In any other division except the NFC West, it would have led to a string of championships during that era. But fate was not yet ready to smile on the Saints, because one of the other teams in that group was the San Francisco 49ers. They had a coach named Bill Walsh, then George Seifert. Quarterbacks named Joe Montana and Steve Young. Receivers named Jerry Rice and John Taylor.