by Jeff Duncan
Though the Saints often repeat some of the same plays, they’ll run them from different alignments with different players to confuse defenses and keep them from identifying what they’re looking at.
“They window dress [the offense] a thousand different ways” to create confusion in the defense, Ravens Coach John Harbaugh said.
The Saints pull off these elaborate disguises because of the versatile way they employ their perimeter players. Most of their skill-position players can and will play more than one position. The receivers can play split end, flanker, or slot. Tight ends can play fullback. Running backs align at wide receiver. Fullbacks play tight end.
The players come and go, but the packages carry over year to year. The Pony package, featuring two running backs, was used extensively during the early years of the Payton-Brees era, when Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister were in their primes. It was highlighted again when Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara teamed up in the same backfield for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
“You’ve got to have versatile players to do that,” Brees said. “When you have that type of versatility, these are things that defenses have to stress about. How are we defending this guy or that guy? They’re the ones who have to react to us.”
This hybridization creates more prep work for the Saints players, but it has several benefits for the Saints. First and foremost, it allows the offense to be malleable from play to play and create confusion for the defense, depending on how they choose to defend the Saints. Second, it helps the offense withstand injuries that might decimate other clubs. And third, it forces opposing teams to prepare for myriad possibilities, all the while knowing that only so many of them will be used during a game and there will likely be new ones they haven’t seen before.
“It really adds into the preparation part of it, because you have to, although they won’t use all those packages in a game, you certainly have to have calls ready in preparation for it,” Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. “They’ve got a big playbook, and when you go through the years and different matchups in different ways they feature the guys, you have to have a bunch of calls ready.”
No player better exemplifies this multiplicity than Taysom Hill, the backup quarterback Payton has turned into a star since signing him as an undrafted free agent in 2017. Hill is a quarterback by trade, but he has become a Swiss Army knife in New Orleans thanks to Payton’s creative mind. In the 2019 season, Hill lined up at five different positions: wide receiver (116 plays), tight end (85), quarterback (41), H-back (17), and fullback (5). His versatility creates a guessing game for defensive coordinators every time he breaks the huddle. Do coordinators defend him with an extra linebacker to try to stop the run? Or do they deploy a safety to cover him as a tight end or receiver?
One of Payton’s favorite ways to use Hill is in three-tight-end sets with Jared Cook and Josh Hill, a grouping the Saints employed 22 times in 2019. They used a similar personnel package in 2010 with Jeremy Shockey, Jimmy Graham, and David Thomas. The three-tight-end sets put defenses in a quandary because the Saints can either run or pass out of the package depending on how the opponent elects to defend it. If the defensive coordinator plays more defensive backs to guard against the pass, then the Saints can quickly motion into a heavy formation with both tight ends in-line and run the powerful Hill at the undersized unit. If the defense goes heavy with extra linebackers, then the Saints can use motions to get the fleet Cook or Hill matched up against a slower linebacker in space.
“They can get into a three-wide [receiver] package with all tight ends in there because they’ve got some good, [athletic] tight ends,” former Ravens defensive coordinator Greg Mattison said. “What they do by doing that is it forces you sometimes on defense to stay more basic in what you’re calling. You can’t load up a run defense when you say [their] tendency is [running the ball], because they could spread you all out, and now you’ve got a disadvantage.”
Former Buffalo Bills head coach and longtime NFL defensive coordinator Rex Ryan said the Saints’ multiplicity forced him to drastically reduce his play call sheet during games when he coached against them.
“We realize it puts defenses on their heels,” Lombardi said.
Once teams go simple, the Saints are masters of taking advantage of defensive tendencies and dictating matchups to the opponent by employing certain personnel packages. To that end, the Saints use every active skill-position player available each game.
“We spend a lot of time in our meetings talking about personnel groupings, not only talking about [receiver] splits and areas of the field they’re going to get to but as we’re going through each play, we discuss who exactly will be running those plays,” Carmichael said. “We do a great job of making sure that the right 11 players are on the field for each play. That is one of the most unique things we do. After all this time, we have a feel for each play and what kind of bodies and characteristics are needed to run it effectively.”
For example, Lombardi said most defensive coordinators will call certain plays with specific personnel groupings to counter an offense when it uses 11 personnel, NFL terminology for a popular personnel grouping featuring three wide receivers, one tight end, and one running back. But against the Saints, the 11 personnel grouping is more complicated than most teams.
“With us, it’s 11 [personnel] but with these receivers and this tight end and there’s three different forms for that,” Lombardi said. “And 21 [personnel], well, it’s different with Alvin Kamara and Latavius Murray. There’s so many different personnel variations, they [the opponent] don’t have time to let the play-caller know who’s on the field and they just have to cut down their calls. They’re not going to chase us around the field and try to match our personnel.”
And when defenses go simple against a quarterback as talented and experienced as Brees, he often has a field day. Therein lies the conundrum.
“They force you to simplify,” Mora said. “When you get simple, Drew Brees knows where you’re going to be, and he knows where to go with the ball.”
If a defense has a weakness, Payton and Brees will find it and attack it, using players and positions like chess pieces to force the hand of the defense and create mismatches.
A 2010 game against the Los Angeles Rams exemplified the Saints’ blitz-the-defense strategy. From the opening snap, the Saints had the Rams on their heels with an aggressive, up-tempo attack. The Saints used a different personnel grouping on their first six plays. They alternated backs and receivers on almost every down. By the eighth snap of their opening 13-play drive, all 12 skill-position players had been on the field for at least one play. The rundown of running backs on those eight plays: Reggie Bush, Pierre Thomas, no back, Chris Ivory, Bush and Thomas, Thomas, Bush and Ivory.
“We moved in and out of a lot of different personnel early on—three tight ends, one tight end, three running backs, no running backs,” Payton said later. “The personnel was constantly changing early to create indecision and to slow down any type of plan they might have.”
While the plan was impressive, the execution was even more remarkable. There were no dropped passes or mental errors. Despite the fast pace and hectic substitutions, the Saints committed only one penalty on the first two series.
The Saints averaged six yards a play and compiled 12- and 13-play touchdown drives to start the game. The Rams saw that three-tight-end package Mattison talked about on seven of their first 21 plays. Brees completed 13 of 15 passes in the first quarter for 97 yards and two touchdowns. Eight of his completions were to backs and tight ends. Before the Rams could catch their breath and make their defensive adjustments, the Saints led 14–0 and were on their way to an easy 31–13 victory.
“I think you spend so much time trying to figure out what the exact personnel group is in the game and what you want to be [in defensively to defend it], and then you are late getting in the play call,” said Tennessee Titans coach Mike V
rabel, a former star linebacker for the New England Patriots. “And they operate so efficiently in and out of the huddle. The way Drew commands the huddle and operates, then you’re behind, you’re scrambling. You’ve just got to get a call in and get ready and get adjusted.”
Payton unveiled an unconventional play against the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018 to have just such an effect. The play featured all three of the Saints quarterbacks—Brees, Hill, and Teddy Bridgewater—and only resulted in a one-yard run by Hill. But that wasn’t necessarily the point. The unusual look forced the Eagles defenders to scramble.
“Part of it, really, is thinking of something that they [the Eagles] haven’t seen,” Payton said. “That’s the job of a game-planner. You want eight heads to turn to [Eagles veteran safety] Malcolm Jenkins and be like, ‘What do we do?’”
ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski calls it “renting space in the defense’s mind.”
In that same game, Payton built his game plan to target the Eagles’ injury-ravaged secondary. Philadelphia entered the game without three of its four starters in the defensive backfield.
Further, starting cornerback Sidney Jones, who began the season as a backup, was coming into the game with a hamstring injury. The Saints attacked him from the opening snap. Payton ran three of their first four plays right at Jones. He lasted 22 plays before leaving the game with an injury. The Eagles’ other starting cornerback, Avonte Maddox, left even earlier than that, hitting the sideline after 18 plays. Payton mercilessly attacked their inexperienced backups for the rest of the game. They employed a heavy diet of multiple-receiver sets to stretch thin the Eagles’ defensive backfield and Brees carved it up, completing 23 of 30 passes for 363 yards and four touchdowns. His quarterback rating for the game was a near-perfect 153.2. The Saints routed the Eagles 48–7, the worst loss ever delivered to a defending Super Bowl champion.
“The thing that I’ve always respected about Sean competing against him [when Payton was with] the Giants and the Cowboys is that he forces you to play against every personnel group known to man,” said longtime NFL defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who coached on Payton’s staff for three seasons from 2009 to 2011. “He forces you to put every personnel group you have on the field. And then if he can figure out, ‘Hey, that fourth corner, that third corner, that third linebacker isn’t really as good,’ then he forces you to keep that group on the field.”
The Saints were the only team in the NFL to start a different offensive lineup in all 16 games for each of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons. In the past decade, they have annually ranked among the league leaders in most unique offensive lineups. They are the only team in the NFL to rank in the top five in this category each of the past six seasons.
“They throw the whole sink at you early with their personnel groups and formations, their shifts and motions and different concepts,” said Rich Gannon, the CBS Sports NFL analyst, who won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award in 2002 while running a similar version of the Saints offense under Coach Jon Gruden. “It’s really their way of blitzing the defense. It’s personnel that come on and off the field. It’s formations. It’s motions and shifts. It’s a quarterback that’s been in this system for 14 seasons. It’s a lot to prepare for and it puts a lot of stress on a defense in terms of their ability to make adjustments and communicate.”
10. The Grind: Putting Together the Plan
The tight ends room is located on the first floor of the New Orleans Saints training facility, across the hall from the squad room. As rooms go, it’s nondescript—four gray cinder block walls, a black door, and a black-gray carpet. It could pass for a classroom in your neighborhood elementary school if not for the floor-to-ceiling photographic mural of Jeremy Shockey on the wall behind tight ends coach Dan Campbell’s desk and the two motivational signs on each side of the room: New Orleans Saints Tight Ends Musts: Smart. Tough and Aggressive. Competitive. Relentless.
For the leading passer in NFL history, this is where the weekly grind of preparing for the upcoming opponent begins. For all intents and purposes, this is Drew Brees’ office at 5800 Airline Drive.
“Officially, it’s the tight ends room, but really it’s Drew Brees’ room,” Campbell joked.
Brees isn’t sure when the tight ends room became his de facto office, but he knows it was early in his Saints tenure. And he knows why: necessity and convenience. Since the quarterbacks are the only offensive position group without their own meeting room, they were forced to become wanderers for office space throughout the building. They’d alternate between meeting in Carmichael’s office or the offensive staff meeting room on the second floor. They eventually found themselves diving into the tight ends room every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning after the main team meeting when the tight ends attended special teams meetings. Its central location saved them time and energy from traversing the stairs to the main film room on the second floor during game weeks.
Over the years, Brees adopted it as his preferred spot to evaluate film. During the season, he spends a good portion of his weekday mornings breaking down game tape here. Consequently, the tight ends room is now outfitted with an espresso machine that serves Brees’ favorite coffee and has a large cardboard cutout of his smiling face displayed on the wall, a prop Campbell preserved from one of Brees’ post-practice quarterback competitions.
NFL work weeks follow a similar schedule. Tuesday is a long day for the coaching staff, a full day of film study and meetings to compile the plan for the base offense, the first- and second-down plays that will be run against the upcoming opponent. It’s an off day for the players: time to rest, recover, and enjoy with family and friends. For Brees, it’s a full day of work. He typically gets to the facility before dawn and doesn’t leave until after dark.
While Campbell and the rest of the offensive staff are meeting collectively upstairs on the second floor, Brees is one floor below with the other quarterbacks, studying video of the upcoming opponent’s last three games and any other games coaches deem relevant.
Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays begin at 6 or 6:30 am to account for practice sessions in the afternoon. The film study sessions on these days corresponds to the specific daily install of the game plan. Wednesdays are what is known as base offense—first and second down—so the group will not only watch all the video of every first and second down the opposing defense has played in the past three games, but also specialized cut-ups of every blitz or pressure package they’ve run during those downs over a longer period of time. They do the same thing on Thursday for third downs and Friday for specialty situations: red zone, short yardage, goal line, and two-minute. The idea is for the film study session to inform the quarterbacks of the plays the coaching staff will install for practice that afternoon.
Film study is serious stuff for Brees. He takes notes in a journal throughout the sessions and forbids any conversation that doesn’t pertain to the task at hand. If the other quarterbacks want to talk about the great dunk from the Pelicans game the night before or the great restaurant they plan to hit with their wives that evening for dinner, they need to do it before or after film study. As the unquestioned leader of the group, Brees sets the tone.
“Once we turn the film on, it’s all business,” Hill said.
Brees is so locked in during his film study sessions, he often doesn’t even notice when Campbell ducks in to grab something from his desk or file cabinet.
“I have my routine and I really just zone everything else out,” Brees said.
The intensity and breadth of Brees’ film study sessions often stun newcomers and rookies when they encounter them for the first time. The tedious attention to detail and sheer time involved require extraordinary mental stamina. Some quarterbacks simply can’t handle the grind, Daniel and Hill being the exceptions.
“It’s intense,” Daniel said. “He takes what he does very seriously, and a lot of guys that come into the league or that come
from different teams, they just they don’t get it, and they don’t understand it. But his intensity makes everyone around him want to be that way because they understand how much he cares. That sets a tone for the team and people feed off that. Some quarterbacks are these happy-go-lucky guys. That’s not Drew. He’s a guy that you can go to war with.”
Brees doesn’t simply watch film. He scrutinizes it with the precision and intensity of a gem cutter. He methodically goes through each play, scanning the defense for any kind of “tell” he can find in a defender’s body language or alignment. During video cut-ups of an opponent’s third-down defense and blitz packages, he might rewind a single play two dozen times as he studies each of the 11 defenders and their alignment and positioning and jots down notes to himself in his journal. It’s a tedious, time-consuming task and Brees takes no shortcuts—not even after 19 years.
“I remember my rookie year, Chase [Daniel] and I would look over at each other and be like, ‘What is he looking at? Why is he rewinding this play again and again?’” Taysom Hill said. “But the longer I’ve been with him, what I’ve realized is he’s watching every single player on the defense. How is this corner going to play in this coverage? How is this linebacker going to play in that coverage? How’s the safety going to play? He tries to break down tendencies so he knows how a defender is going to react on any given play based on what the route is, what the coverage is. And he does that throughout the entire week.”
Over the years, Brees has become fluent in body language. He has a thorough understanding of defensive concepts and coverage responsibilities in a particular scheme. He has developed scouting reports on various defensive coordinators and knows their tendencies and personnel preferences. Consequently, he has become an expert at reading a defender’s pre-snap behavior and body language, especially in rookies or inexperienced players.