by Jeff Duncan
This inclusivity has been a hallmark of the Payton-Brees era. While both ardently believe in a “feed the studs” approach with stars like Thomas, Kamara, Graham, and Colston, they also are keenly aware of the importance role players have in the overall effectiveness of the offense.
When Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz elected to double-cover Kamara and Thomas in the teams’ 2018 regular season game in New Orleans, Brees completed 18 of 26 passes to his supporting cast. Smith, Arnold, Kirkwood, and Carr—a third-round draft pick and three undrafted free agents—combined to catch 18 passes for 244 yards and two touchdowns in a 48–7 blowout. A week later, Arnold, Lewis, Kirkwood, and Carr accounted for all four touchdowns in the Saints’ 31–17 rout of the Atlanta Falcons.
Hill noted this after scoring the Saints’ only two touchdowns in a 26–18 win against the Atlanta Falcons in 2019, “When you have guys like Mike Thomas, Alvin Kamara, Jared Cook, the list goes on, it kind of creates opportunities for little ole’ me because there is so much attention that is put on those guys and Coach [Payton] is one of the best at being creative and putting guys in positions to be successful,” Hill said. “I got lucky because I was that guy tonight.”
When Payton noticed a flaw in the Cowboys’ defensive scheme in 2006, he famously targeted fullback Mike Karney throughout the game. Karney caught five passes for 39 yards and scored three touchdowns. In the 12 games leading into the Dallas game, Karney had a total of eight catches for 43 yards and six carries for 10 yards.
“Sean loves that because he’s such a football nerd,” Saints wide receiver Austin Carr told NBC Sports’ Peter King in 2018. “He’s the football equivalent of a coder.”
Carr is a role player in the Saints offense. His main role is blocking in the running game, which explains why he caught a total of 10 passes for 106 yards and two touchdowns in the 21 games he played during his first three seasons. But that didn’t stop Payton from calling his number for a couple of touchdowns in the 2018 season. Both scores exemplified Payton’s ingenious play-calling.
Because Carr is an excellent blocker, the Saints use him on many running plays, both to give Mike Thomas a breather and to take advantage of Carr’s physicality on the perimeter. Entering the Saints’ Week 12 game against the Atlanta Falcons, Payton noticed on film that teams were overplaying the run when Carr entered the game, essentially ignoring him as a receiver. So he installed a play against the Falcons on Thanksgiving night to take advantage of it.
Payton planned to use the play in the red zone, so when the Saints approached the Falcons 20-yard line late in the first half, he set the hook. Carr was inserted into the lineup on a second-and-5 play and the Saints ran the ball with Mark Ingram.
When they reached the red zone two plays later, they used the same formation and personnel grouping, but this time, Carr slipped off his block and popped free into the right flat. Brees hit him for an easy 12-yard touchdown. No Falcons defender was within 10 yards of Carr. Another touchdown pass that Connor Payton could have thrown.
“That score was set up with the previous four or five weeks of play-calling,” Carr said. “We had run that play tons of times with the same personnel grouping. If you ask someone a question and you know what answer they’re going to give you, then you already have your response, right? That’s why he’s special as a play-caller.”
Intel also contributed to Carr’s score. The Saints took advantage of inexperienced Falcons safety Sharrod Neasman on the play. Neasman was a former undrafted rookie free agent who was thrust into a starting role because of injuries to Keanu Neal and Ricardo Neal earlier in the season. The Saints were familiar with Neasman from the time they had him in training camp earlier that season and knew some of his tendencies. Later in the Thanksgiving night game, Brees picked on Neasman again, hitting Arnold in single coverage against him for a 25-yard touchdown pass.
The aggressive way Payton targeted defensive weaknesses reminded former Saints wide receiver Devery Henderson of how Nick Saban would attack offenses during his coaching tenure at LSU.
“Sean Payton is a great play-caller and he sees the game through the eyes of a quarterback,” Gannon said. “He likes to keep his foot on the throttle and continue to keep the pressure on the defense throughout the course of the game.”
The former quarterback in Payton understands and appreciates the competitive mindset of his players. He knows the best way to keep his skill players invested in the plan is to get them the ball. And as the play-caller, he tries to call the number of as many players as possible early during a game.
Consequently, the Saints have rarely had players publicly complain about their usage or number of targets. The notable exception was Brandin Cooks, who openly expressed his frustrations about not being targeted enough in 2016. Not surprisingly, the Saints traded Cooks to the New England Patriots a year later.
“What’s remarkable is how well Sean and Drew can manage those personalities through the game plan by putting them in situations where they can be successful,” McCown said. “When you’re shuffling personnel as much as Sean does, the genius of organizing a game plan that balances the goal of helping the team win and attacking the defense while also managing personalities and making everybody happy is beyond impressive. The amount of time that both of them put into the offensive game plan and managing people and scheming to get the ball to guys early in the game and keep them involved for that offense that really take their offensive genius to another level.”
Brees makes a conscious effort to keep everyone involved. He regularly completes at least one pass to every skill position player on the active roster in a game. He rarely plays a game when he doesn’t at least target every offensive weapon at his disposal.
In 2018, Drew Brees set an NFL record by throwing touchdown passes to 15 different players including the regular season and postseason. Of those 15 players, nine were former undrafted free agents: Arnold, Carr, Kirkwood, Lewis, Meredith, Garrett Griffin, Zach Line, and both Hills, Josh and Taysom. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, no team has had nine undrafted players catch touchdown passes since the draft came into existence in 1936.
“I think that’s what makes Drew so great, is it doesn’t matter who you are or where you went to school or if you’re a first-round pick or undrafted. If you get open, he’s gonna get you the ball,” Griffin said.
Griffin is a perfect example of Brees and Payton’s “if-you’re-open” passing philosophy. The tight end from Air Force spent the entire 2018 regular season on the practice squad and was activated for the playoffs. The five-yard touchdown pass he caught from Brees in the NFC Championship Game remains the only touchdown catch of his career.
“If you look over the course of the [2018] season, some of the guys who have had touchdowns, it’s like people had never even heard of them before,” Griffin said. “I think that’s what kind of makes Drew special.”
This share-the-wealth approach by Brees and Payton has the added benefit of keeping defenses off-balance. As Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said before their Week 3 game of the 2019 season against the Saints, “I don’t know what Sean’s going to do. But rarely does anybody know what he’s going to do come game time.”
And that includes his own coaches and players. No idea is too crazy for Payton. He tells his staff he’s in the “buying business” when it comes to play ideas. This inclusive approach also fosters buy-in from the staff.
“Sean always wants thoughts and ideas and input,” Marrone said. “The mindset is always about being open-minded about trying to get better. There’s really no limit to where we want to go. Sometimes the crazier the idea was, the better chance you had of getting it called in a game. The thought process was: Are we good enough to get this done?”
The answer for Payton, Brees, and the Saints offensive staff is always yes.
13. The Supercomputer
The play on which Drew Brees broke Peyt
on Manning’s all-time passing record is called Hop to Gun King Trips Right Tear 52 Sway All Go Special X Shallow Cross Halfback Wide. It’s a derivative of one of the Saints’ most popular route concepts, the All Go Special, one of their favorite zone beaters. It’s designed to beat zone coverage by flooding one side of the field with four receivers. The route concept on the strong side of the offensive formation stresses the deep safety and flat defenders by running three receivers through the coverage on vertical routes and sending the running back into the flat on the same side. The defenders in coverage on that side of the field are forced to make split-second decisions on who to cover.
Precise spacing and route running are keys to the play. The receivers aligned wide—in this case, Tre’Quan Smith and Cameron Meredith—are positioned on each side of the numbers and run vertical go routes straight downfield. Smith is assigned to release outside his defender and fade his route toward the sideline. Inside of Smith, Meredith maintains his route down the numbers. And inside of them, Arnold, aligned in the slot just outside the right tackle, runs a post route designed to carry the safety in the middle of the field. Michael Thomas, the only receiver aligned to the left side of the formation, runs a shallow crossing route underneath the zone coverage to the right. Kamara provides the checkdown outlet by running a flat route to the right.
Brees’ progression, known as a triangle read, is to the two inside receivers on the right—in this case, Meredith and Arnold—and then to Thomas, cutting across the field underneath from left to right.
The play stresses the zone coverage by sending three receivers deep on vertical routes—Smith, Meredith, and Arnold—and two receivers shallow on horizontal routes—Thomas and Kamara. If defenders don’t communicate well and maintain proper discipline in their assignments, it can often produce a big play. Against the Redskins, the Saints ran this same play with the same personnel on the previous series to the left side of their formation. Brees hit his primary read, Meredith, down the numbers for a 46-yard gain to convert a second-and-17 play.
Now, on first-and-10 with Brees needing 35 yards to break the record and a national television audience watching, the Saints were calling it again, this time flipped to the opposite side of the formation.
During their week of preparation, the Saints noticed on film that the Redskins made an adjustment in their Cover 2 defense when the opponent aligned four skill players to one side of the field. The Redskins walked up their free safety—in this case, D.J. Swearinger—to cover the running back’s route out of the backfield and rolled strong safety Montae Nicholson into a single safety alignment in the middle of the field. When this happened, the cornerbacks aligned on the boundary were responsible for deep coverage on their third of the field.
The Saints knew exactly how to attack this vulnerability. And they were going to try to make history while doing it.
When Brees motioned Kamara from the left side of the backfield to the right side before the snap, the Redskins responded accordingly. Swearinger immediately repositioned toward the line of scrimmage and Nicholson rolled left to the middle of the field. After motioning Kamara, Brees immediately called for the snap. The Saints were blitzing the defense, forcing the Redskins to adjust on the fly. And it worked.
As Brees backpedaled into his five-step drop and surveyed the field, he immediately noticed something awry. Josh Norman, the Redskins cornerback on the strong side of the field, was in the wrong place. Instead of retreating to cover the deep third of the secondary, he instead squatted in coverage near the line of scrimmage, eyes glued to Brees and Kamara.
“I’m turning and looking, I see that the corner, who’s supposed to be deep third is not deep third, so immediately I know there’s nobody in the deep third and that’s where Tra’quan is,” Brees said. “Look, throw. I didn’t even look, throw. It was just…feel, throw.”
Smith was wide open. Sixty-two yards later, he was in the end zone with the record-breaking catch.
Smith was as shocked as anyone that the ball came his way. As the outside receiver on the strong side of the play, his role is essentially to occupy the attention of the boundary cornerback and pull him away from Meredith and Arnold. In other words, he’s the clear-out guy. In Saints jargon, this is known as a “bus ticket” route.
“We call it a bus ticket because if you don’t have an outside release and carry the corner and mess up the play, then they’re going to find you a bus ticket home,” Taysom Hill said. “That gives you an idea of where [Smith’s] route is in the progression on that play.”
The play is one of the most popular in the Saints playbook. They’ve run it countless times over the years. Brees’ first option is to Arnold on the post, then he looks to Meredith. If they are covered, he comes back to Thomas on the crossing route underneath. Kamara is the checkdown option if all else fails. But Smith? In all of the years the Saints have run the play during the Payton-Brees era, coaches and players said they can’t remember a pass ever being thrown to the receiver on that route.
“I’m, like, the fourth read in the progression,” Smith said. “I thought Drew was going to throw it to Cam again because he was also open.”
It was a one-in-a-million throw. And fittingly, Brees delivered it on the play that made him the NFL’s all-time passing king.
“I don’t know how Drew saw him or felt him on that play,” Carmichael said. “The Redskins had gotten a little confused and were in between one coverage and another coverage. Drew just threw it up. He didn’t even think. To this day, I don’t think we’ve ever thrown it to that guy on that particular play.”
Over the years, Brees has developed an encyclopedic knowledge of NFL defenses. He’s picked the brains of every defensive coordinator on the Saints staff over the years to learn the responsibilities of each defender in each defensive coverage. When Norman went off script and blew the coverage, Brees knew it the same way you or I would recognize the rearrangement of our living room furniture.
“He processes things extremely well,” Payton said. “It’s one of his rare traits. Where that ball went on that pass was uncanny.”
This almost superhuman ability to process and execute in game conditions is why former Saints tackle Jon Stinchomb refers to Brees as “the supercomputer.” His teammates and coaches marvel at his ability to compute on the fly and make split-second decisions.
“The amount of information that he can take out and process and react to is much more than anyone I’ve ever been around,” Lombardi said. “His lens is wide, and he sees everything and processes it so quick.”
Brees is constantly computing calculations in his head. When the Saints find a cornerback or safety they want to target in coverage, Brees essentially becomes an oddsmaker in cleats. His mind calculates the chances of success on a play based on the matchups discussed during the week of preparation.
In Brees’ mind, receivers like Colston and Thomas are rarely truly covered. Because of his confidence in his own accuracy and the trust he’s developed with his receivers during practice, Brees is willing to throw passes many other quarterbacks won’t attempt, especially if it’s a matchup he and the staff have deemed favorable during their week of preparation.
“If Mike Thomas is one-on-one, I like our odds,” Brees said. “Even when he’s two-on-one, it had better be a really good two-on-one or else there’s usually still a place you can throw the ball where he can get it and they can’t. You assess that. That’s my job as a quarterback. Be a great decision maker, get the ball in the hands of the playmakers, but you’ll make those good decisions.”
A 2009 game against the New York Giants illustrated this point. The Saints went after Giants safety C.C. Brown in coverage for the entire game. Brown was a backup strong safety who had been forced into a starting role at free safety because of injuries. He had three total interceptions in his four-year career. Football Outsiders referred to him as a player “with the range of a broken wireless router.�
�� The Saints targeted Brown seven times in coverage and completed five passes for 96 yards, five first downs, and two touchdowns.
“In that game specifically, I’m looking at a safety who isn’t very experienced,” Brees said, recalling, in detail, the strategy for the game almost a decade later. “I can tell [from film study] that he’s maybe not in the right position a lot of times. Then when the ball is in the air, he has a hard time tracking it, a hard time playing the receiver. In my mind, the computation immediately goes up in our favor as to the percentage of something good that will happen. If any of my guys get one-on-one with this guy down the field, I’m going to throw it, because only three things can happen, and none of them are really that bad. The worst thing that happens is an incompletion. But we also might get a PI [pass interference penalty]. Or we might catch it for a touchdown. Immediately, in my mind, when I get that matchup, it’s like, ‘Ding, ding, ding.’ That’s opportunity.”
In the Saints’ Week 16 game against the Tennessee Titans in 2019, Brees made a similar calculation. He had tight end Jared Cook in single coverage against safety Kevin Byard. Brees went after him for a completely different reason than he did C.C. Brown a decade earlier. Byard, after all, was a Pro Bowler and All-Pro in 2017. He was regarded as one of the top ball hawks in the league, with 16 interceptions in the 2017–19 seasons. But none of that mattered to Brees. In his mind, it was basic math. Or in this case, physics. Cook stands 6’5”. Byard is 5’11”.
Byard jammed Cook at the line of scrimmage and ran stride for stride with him toward the goal line. By all accounts, Byard had Cook covered. Undeterred, Brees fired a pass high and over Cook’s outside shoulder and Cook made a leaping grab in the back of the end zone. The 16-yard touchdown gave the Saints a 30–21 lead in the fourth quarter and helped seal a big road win.
“Cook is a big target obviously, and he has a big catch radius,” Brees said later explaining why he targeted Cook on the play. “Any one-on-one matchup, there’s not a guy on defense that’s going to match his size, right? You always feel like there is a place where you throw the football where he can get it and other guys can’t.”