Payton and Brees

by Jeff Duncan

  On the first series of the second half, Brees found his rhythm. He completed 5 of 6 passes for 60 yards, the final 14 on a touchdown strike to Michael Thomas to trim the Vikings lead to 17–7 with 1:18 left in the third quarter. After spinning their wheels for two-plus quarters, the Saints finally had some momentum.

  One of Payton’s strengths as a coach is his feel for a game’s pace. The quarterback in him still has an innate sense of the ebbs and flows of a football game. He constantly talks about gaining and losing control of a game as a play-caller. Payton knew this was the Saints’ chance to get back into this one. They desperately needed to capitalize on the moment. And when Marcus Williams intercepted Case Keenum on the first play of the Vikings’ ensuing drive and returned it deep into Vikings territory, Payton knew the door of opportunity had just swung wide open for the Saints.

  As the Saints marched toward the Vikings goal line, he began thinking of a play he’d been waiting to call, something he discovered during the coaching staff’s week of game preparation.

  While studying film of the Vikings red zone defense in his office late Thursday night, Payton came across a play the Indianapolis Colts successfully ran against the Vikings for a touchdown a year earlier. The play itself—a six-yard touchdown run by Robert Turbin—wasn’t what caught Payton’s eye. What he noticed was the void in the Vikings secondary on the back side of the play. As the Colts tight end positioned himself before the snap to make a crackback block on the Vikings left defensive end, the Vikings linebackers and free safety all immediately diagnosed the play and attacked the line of scrimmage to stop the run. Unfortunately, their execution didn’t match their play recognition, as Turbin slipped three tackle attempts by Vikings defenders and skirted into the end zone.

  To Payton, the result of the play was irrelevant. What mattered was how the Vikings defense played it. And the large, undefended expanse of turf they left open in the back side of the secondary caused Payton to sit up in his seat. It was just the kind of weakness an offensive play-caller like Payton lived to attack, the Holy Grail of film study.

  “I saw that,” Payton said, “and thought: That’s interesting.”

  Saints tight ends coach Dan Campbell refers to this discovery process as “finding the golden nugget.” The code-breakers come in a variety of forms, but most are either personnel- or scheme-related: a cornerback’s tendency to bite on play fakes; a linebacker’s poor ball skills; a systematic flaw in a coverage scheme. This elusive cracking of the defensive code is what drives Payton and makes Saints coaches spend long, tedious hours in the office scanning videotape until their eyes glaze over the week before a game.

  In the mind of the eternally confident Payton, there is always a flaw somewhere to exploit. It might take more time find it against disciplined, well-coached teams. But it’s there. And in this case, the Saints head coach was going to take advantage of one of the Vikings’ strengths: the intelligence and instinctiveness of the Minnesota defense.

  Payton knew the Vikings’ defensive tendencies well. He and Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer worked together on Bill Parcells’ Cowboys staff in the early 2000s. Payton considered Zimmer one of the top defensive minds in the NFL and respected the discipline of his units. He also knew Zimmer’s preference for smart, tough, veteran players like free safety Harrison Smith and linebackers Erik Kendricks and Anthony Barr.

  From film study and having played the Vikings four months earlier in the regular season opener, Payton could see how quickly Smith, Barr, and Kendricks diagnosed plays, sometimes ambushing the opposing ballcarrier in the backfield just after the handoff.

  Payton knew Zimmer implicitly trusted his veteran defensive leaders at key moments in the game and often aligned in a certain single-high safety zone defense during tight red-zone situations. Payton wanted to use that aggressiveness against the Vikings. To do that, he needed to create an illusion. So, using the Turbin run in 2016 as a guideline, the Saints designed a play late Thursday night, less than 72 hours before kickoff, that would exploit the Vikings’ aggressive tactics.

  The play was called Full Left Twin Y Orbit Q8 Kill Toss 39 Michael and it provided Brees two options at the line of scrimmage. If the Vikings blitzed, he would check to a quick pass to Mike Thomas, one of the Saints’ favorite blitz-beaters. But if Zimmer did what he usually does and the defense aligned the way the Saints expected, in an aggressive zone look with man-to-man principles, then Brees would call their special pass play.

  The key to the play was the window dressing. The Saints had to make it look exactly like the one the Colts ran against the Vikings a year earlier. And if the subterfuge worked, it would fool the Vikings’ best defenders and attack two of their most vulnerable ones.

  Strong safety Anthony Harris was a former undrafted rookie from Virginia who was primarily a reserve and special teams standout during his first three seasons with the Vikings. He has since developed into a Pro Bowl–caliber player, but at the time, he was only playing because starter Andrew Sendejo had left the game after being concussed during a collision with Michael Thomas in pass coverage. The Saints knew the inexperienced Harris might be overly aggressive from his position in the back center of the Vikings defense and were going to challenge him.

  The other key target was slot cornerback Terence Newman, a Zimmer favorite, who, at 39, was the oldest defensive back in the league. The Saints loved the matchup of the physically gifted 24-year-old Thomas in the slot against the aging, slow-footed Newman. Payton was so confident in the matchup he told Thomas earlier in the week, “You’re going to retire Terence Newman on this play.”

  The Saints broke the huddle and wide receiver Willie Snead aligned to the left side with fellow receivers Ted Ginn Jr. and Michael Thomas to the right. When Brees saw the Vikings defense align in the exact defensive look they wanted, he immediately checked into the pass option of the play by audibling at the line of scrimmage.

  To the average onlooker, Brees’ hand signals and audibles meant nothing. To the Saints offensive players, it was Go Time. Toss 39 Michael was on.

  Brees quickly signaled for Kamara to move from a right off-set position in the backfield to the “I” spot directly behind him, then signaled for Hill to start his waggle motion from his alignment on the left side of the formation.

  “We were giving the illusion that we were running a toss crack play to the left, and so what we did is we had Josh Hill do this little back-and-forth motion to make it look like, ‘Oh, here I come to crack the [defensive] end,’” Brees said. “With smart, instinctive linebackers and safeties, the minute that they see and feel that motion, they’re running to where they feel like you’re going to toss crack because they know that if they can beat their block, then they’re going to hit this thing in the backfield for a loss. So honestly, it’s a play that you run against smart defenses. And that’s a smart defense.”

  The Saints probably wouldn’t have tried this tactic against an inexperienced defense. But against a savvy, veteran-laden unit like the Vikings, it was perfect.

  “You’re counting on them to do what you have studied [on tape],” Payton said. “It’s hard to fool the dummy who’s gotten fooled a bunch. He’s inconsistent. You’re looking for consistent behavior, and these guys [the Vikings] are smart, now.”

  To sell the ruse, Payton instructed Hill to shuffle his feet extra times and stare down the end, the exact opposite of his normal M.O. Hill’s acting job worked like a charm. As he began his waggle motion, Smith, Barr, and Kendricks, on cue, immediately started to cheat that way.

  “Josh sold the crack so much you can see Harrison Smith basically jump into blitz mode to get into the backfield,” Payton said. “To him, this was kindergarten.”

  Except it wasn’t.

  After the snap, Brees enhanced the illusion by faking a pitch to Kamara, who broke to his left as if running a toss sweep. The play-fake caused safety Harris, aligned in the back center of the end zone, t
o take two quick steps toward Kamara, leaving a massive window on the backside of the Vikings defense where Thomas and Ginn were breaking into their pass routes from the right side of the formation.

  Just as Payton expected, Newman was no match for the powerful Thomas, who easily beat the veteran cornerback on a quick slant. Brees’ strike led him perfectly into the void vacated by Harris. Thomas scored standing up. No Vikings defender was within four yards of him in the end zone.

  “That’s as good as it gets,” Payton said. “When it all comes together like that, it’s like fuckin’ Christmas.”

  Walk-in touchdowns in the red zone are rare commodities in the NFL, where the schemes are so sophisticated and the athletes so fast and well-prepared. When they occur, you know something unusual happened, either a busted coverage or a well-designed scheme.

  “The pro report [from director of pro personnel Terry Fontenot],” Payton said, explaining the Vikings’ setup play, “is going to give me what they do, their strengths and weaknesses, but the film study is going to show me, where are their eyes in this coverage. Are they playing the coverage the right way? They played this coverage well. Everyone did their job. Zimm will go back and watch this on film and say, ‘All right, man. They got us on that one.’”

  The touchdown was the culmination of hours of work by the Saints staff. Every detail of the play—the personnel grouping, the formation and alignment down to the width of the receiver splits, the waggle by Hill, the play-fake by Brees and Kamara, the route by Thomas—was hashed out in offensive meetings as the Saints compiled their red-zone game plan for the Vikings. Then it was put into motion and repped on the practice field that Friday afternoon. And it was all done knowing the situation might not materialize in the game or see the light of the day.

  “It was textbook,” former Saints offensive assistant Joe Brady said. “It worked exactly like Sean said it would during the week. He painted the picture exactly like it played out. It was special.”

  Backup quarterback Chase Daniel admitted being dubious of the play when Payton installed it that Friday.

  “I just remember thinking, ‘What is this play? This play is like something out of Pop Warner. They’re never going to fall for it. They’re an NFL defense,’” Daniel said. “Sure enough, the first chance he gets, when we need it, when we’re down there in the right situation, he calls it and it is wide open—like completely wide open.”

  The touchdown silenced the U.S. Bank Stadium crowd and fueled a fourth-quarter comeback that should have gone down in Saints history. Instead, Diggs’ heroics rendered it an afterthought. Regardless, it exemplified why Payton is considered one of the great offensive coaches in NFL history.

  “He’s been doing it a long time and he’s very creative,” Eagles head coach Doug Pederson said of Payton. “The thing is with Sean, too, he’s going to exhaust the film, like most coaches. But I think he definitely goes above and beyond to exhaust the tape. He’s going to find something that he can exploit in your defense.”

  One of Payton’s favorite finds came in Week 12 of the 2018 season, when he noticed a weakness in the Atlanta defense during film prep for the teams’ nationally televised Thanksgiving night game. The Falcons zone pass coverage had a flaw he hoped to exploit. When Atlanta opponents were in a 3-by-1 set with three receivers to one side of the offensive formation and changed the strength of their formation late against the Falcons defense, it put weak-side linebacker De’Vondre Campbell in a difficult spot. Not only was he expected to stop the run, but he also was responsible for covering the deep third of the secondary on the back side of the defense, an almost impossible task. The Saints installed a play that week to attack this weakness and planned to use it when they were just outside the Falcons 20-yard line, an area the Saints referred to as the fringe red zone on the call sheet.

  To make the play even more effective, Payton installed it with Tommylee Lewis as the primary receiver. The diminutive speedster was activated that week for the first time since suffering an injury in Week 2 and probably would be overlooked in the Falcons game- planning. The idea was to use Thomas to attract the focus of the coverage and slip Lewis behind the unsuspecting secondary in the opposite direction. Further, the Saints threw in some window dressing, pulling left guard Andrus Peat and having Brees fake a handoff in the backfield to Mark Ingram to sell a run play. Payton was so confident in the play’s potential success he told Thomas during the week he would have the best view in the Superdome of Lewis’ touchdown as he ran his fade route into the right corner of the end zone.

  Payton didn’t waste any time in dialing it up from his extensive menu of plays. After the Saints marched to the Falcons 28-yard line on their opening drive, Payton sent in the call from the sideline.

  Just as he anticipated, Brees’ play-action fake lured Campbell into two false steps toward the flow of the play in the Saints backfield. Lewis, from his starting spot in the right slot, snuck unimpeded into the heart of the Falcons defense and raced past the Falcons linebackers on an over route to the left. Suddenly, safety Damontae Kazee, who was aligned alone in center field, was caught in a pickle, with Lewis racing in front of him to his right and Thomas and Keith Kirkwood running go routes to his left. It was one of the easiest pitch-and-catches Brees would make all season. Lewis hauled in the 28-yard pass untouched.

  “When they drew up the play during the week, Coach [Payton] explained how it would play out and it played out the exact same way in the game,” Lewis said. “We knew they would concentrate their coverage on Michael and he would hold that corner and safety (away from the play). All I had to do was beat the linebacker.”

  When describing the play later, Payton said wryly, “Connor [Payton’s son] could have made that throw.”

  Payton values film study as much as any coach in football. He believes the process is a critical part of an NFL coach’s job, the staff’s inherent obligation to the rest of the team. It’s why he requires his coaches to work 18-hour days during the season and why he built a sleep room on the second floor of the Saints training facility with bunk beds and curtains to aid the process.

  Consequently, the Saints offensive staff has earned a reputation among its peers as one of the most creative, hard-working groups in the NFL. All NFL coaches grind, to some degree. But the Saints take pride in going the extra mile in their commitment to film study because Payton demands it. The staff rarely leaves the Saints facility on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays before midnight.

  “I don’t know any other way to operate,” Payton said. “I tell our coaches, Friday night is your night to go home. Our job is to find more plays to make the job a little easier for our players. We’re trying to reduce their stress on game days. There’s nothing like finding something late on a Wednesday or Thursday night, and it ends up being a difference-maker. That’s what drives you.”

  Payton’s assistants might grouse to each other from time to time, but they know the drill. It’s all part of the Payton Way. As Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule professes, there’s no secret to the success. Successful golden nugget panning is about discipline, commitment, attention to detail, and countless hours of tedious film study. And when it all comes together on game day, there are no complaints.

  “All of those hours that we’re grinding we’re trying to do one thing: we’re trying to find the very best matchups,” Campbell said. “We want to put our best guy on your worst guy. And you’ve got to freakin’ work at it. Sometimes it may be [that] you can only use this personnel group. Or you can only use this formation. Or you can only use this shift to get that one or two plays of a matchup. But that one or two plays is the difference between seven points and three points or no points. And what’s what makes the difference.”

  It goes back to Saints coaches’ practice of evaluating film of opponents’ games from two or three previous seasons in an effort to find an advantage—including, for new coordinators, studying game
s from the coach’s previous stops to try to assess tendencies.

  “We’ll go through hours and hours of tape until we finally find the gold mine—there it is, we’ve found the golden nugget,” Campbell said. “And that’s what we do. And we do it better than anybody. We’re not trying to be fancy. That’s what some people may think that we’re trying to be elaborate. We’re just trying to get freakin’ Mike Thomas on your worst guy. We’re trying to get Kamara on one of your linebackers. We’re trying to get Jared Cook on your freakin’ donkey, and we’ll see if you can cover him. That’s what we do. And we do it better than anybody else.”

  Dome-ination:

  2009 New York Giants, New England Patriots

  The 2008 rout of the Green Bay Packers wouldn’t be the first time the New Orleans Saints offense would devastate an opponent in the Payton-Brees era. Less than a year later, they would embarrass another proud franchise with another highly rated defense.

  In Week 5 of the 2009 season, the New York Giants came to New Orleans with a 5–0 record and the league’s top-rated pass defense. They were allowing just 210 yards a game and had trailed for a total of only 18 minutes and 31 seconds in their first five games combined. Their pass defense had allowed opposing quarterbacks to pass for only 104 yards a game, 61 fewer than any other team in the NFL.

  Vegas oddsmakers installed the Saints as three-point favorites, essentially calling the teams even on paper. But the Saints had a built-in advantage they didn’t factor into the equation: an open date the previous week. Payton and the staff used the extra time to decipher the Giants defense, and they fixed their crosshairs on cornerback Terrell Thomas and safety C.C. Brown, a pair of inexperienced players who were thrust into starting roles because of injuries to Aaron Rouse and Kenny Phillips.