Injured Saints fullback Heath Evans, a former Patriot, is WEEI.com’s guest blogger in the days leading up to Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. While helping the NFC champions in their preparations for the Colts, Evans is sharing his thoughts about taking part in his second Super Bowl, two years after helping the Patriots reach the NFL’s ultimate game.

Coach Payton ask me today at lunch what I thought about the team schedule. I told him I thought it was perfect! The guys had Monday-Wednesday off, except for some conditioning and some light weightlifting and a few Super Bowl logistics meetings.

His question got me thinking about the 2007 season run to the Super Bowl and the tough days of practice we had leading up to departing for Arizona. All year, we had been fighting the bug of complacency. We started and finished the year in such a dominant fashion that coach Bill [Belichick] kept the pressure on us at all times to not buy into the lie that we were unbeatable. Needless to say, that years’ prep for the Super Bowl was far from easy.

When asked for advice by coach Payton, it is so hard not to see everything through the eyes of Bill Belichick. I grew so deeply rooted in the “Patriot Way” during my stay in New England that my mind is forever ingrained with the Patriot DNA, that I feel like I am always trying to bring a little bit of New England to New Orleans.

I guess what I love the most about being a Saint is that we have a coaching staff that is always willing to learn something new. I love the fact that we have coaches that aren’t ashamed to ask how something was done somewhere else out of respect from where I have come.

All right, it’s 11:46 p.m. and I still have like 50 e-mails to return. Good night from New Orleans!