Payton and Brees

by Jeff Duncan

  “There just were very few plays that we stopped,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said. “They were able to go to a lot of different things.”

  The Saints rushing attack compiled 242 yards on the ground. It was the most rushing yards in a single game since Payton became coach, and the most by the Saints since they rushed for 249 against Cincinnati in 1990. Mark Ingram led the way with a career-high 145 yards on only 14 carries.

  The powerful ground game set up the Saints’ play-action passing attack and Brees picked apart the Cowboys’ overmatched secondary. He completed 34 of 41 passes for 392 yards and four touchdowns. At one point, he strung together 19 consecutive completions, tying his personal best and franchise record. He completed passes to nine different receivers. Four Saints receivers caught touchdown passes.

  “Spreading the ball around, getting everybody involved—these are the days you love to have,” Brees said. “You strive for efficiency both in the run and the pass game. We had that today.”

  18. Two Minutes to Paradise

  If there’s an area of the game where all of Drew Brees and Sean Payton’s talents, abilities, and football IQ are distilled and displayed, it is the two-minute offense. It is during these hectic, high-pressure situations when the game is on the line that Brees and Payton excel, when the countless hours of practice and preparation are unbound and a virtual Big Bang of football knowledge and intuition unleashed. It is during the two-minute drill that two of the game’s most beautiful minds go to work.

  The two-minute drill Brees ran to beat Houston in the Saints’ 2019 season opener was the 35th comeback victory of his career, the third most in NFL history behind Peyton Manning (43) and Tom Brady (36).

  Later in the 2019 season, Brees successfully orchestrated a two-minute drill to set up a game-winning field goal and help the Saints escape with a 34–31 win against the Carolina Panthers at the Superdome. He drove the Saints 65 yards in 11 plays with one timeout to put the Saints in position for Wil Lutz’s 33-yard game-winner against the Panthers.

  Brees completed six of seven passes for 56 yards in the drive, including a 24-yarder to Mike Thomas on third-and-6 to move the Saints into Carolina territory.

  The back-breaking connection was a vintage Brees play and textbook execution by Thomas. The Saints set up Panthers cornerback James Bradberry by running a double move, a slant-and-go pattern called a Sluggo route, designed to take advantage of his aggressiveness in coverage. The Saints had run several slant patterns to Thomas throughout the game and waited to spring the Sluggo route at just the right time. Bradberry bit on the slant fake, and Thomas was wide open for the easy pitch and catch to the Panthers 40.

  “You’re referencing everything [that transpires] throughout the course of the game,” Brees said of the strategy involved on the play. “That formation, that alignment, that release pattern, what did they see, how did they react to it, what can you kind of keep in your back pocket for later on. That’s the game within the game.”

  One play later, Brees hit Alvin Kamara on a perfectly timed and blocked 16-yard screen pass to the 24, then was able to get the Saints even closer by running Kamara off left guard for nine more yards before stopping the clock with a spike at 0:03. Brees did all of this with just one timeout at his disposal and after having been sacked for a six-yard loss on the drive’s opening play.

  “That two-minute drill by Drew was outstanding, the execution of it was outstanding,” Payton said after watching the game film on Monday.

  Brees isn’t exactly sure when he started calling the two-minute drill on his own. He said he’s done it throughout his Saints tenure. The Saints offensive coaches essentially become bystanders during the two-minute drill. They’re watching Brees orchestrate the offense, just like the fans. Other than a suggestion or two from Payton, the two-minute offense is all Brees.

  “We don’t even know what’s going on,” Lombardi said of the coaching staff. “Sean will talk to him and tell him to think about a play here or there but for the most part, he’s got it. That’s very unique. The Bradys and Mannings can do it by themselves, but that’s very unique. He can see it and have a plan. He’s coming up with [route] combinations that aren’t even in the playbook and signaling them to the receivers. It’s amazing.”

  The Saints turn the offense over to Brees in these situations for a couple reasons. One, it saves time. Since the Saints usually don’t substitute or huddle in the two-minute, Brees can call the play at the line of scrimmage using hand signals and code words and save valuable seconds. Two, they do it because they can. Brees knows the offense. He has earned the trust of the Saints coaches over the years and leans on his diligent pregame preparation to identify opposing defenses and their coverage tendencies.

  “You can take those chances with Drew,” Lombardi said. “You know he’s not going to mess it up. There’s so much trust in Drew. He’s not going to make us look dumb here. He’s really good at operating in those stressful situations.”

  Brees couldn’t have operated the two-minute offense so efficiently and effectively early in his Saints tenure, because he wasn’t as familiar with the offense. But after a couple of seasons, he became fluent in the system and the Saints turned the two-minute over to him. It’s unclear how many other quarterbacks in the league have this autonomy. Brees said established veterans like Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Ben Roethlisberger also run their own two-minute drills, but the situation is rare.

  “It is exciting and butterflies, but it is also confidence and unity,” Brees said. “We feel like everybody knows we have a challenge ahead. Everybody knows what we need to do in order to accomplish whatever we need to accomplish to go win the game. Everybody kind of just locks in and goes. It’s where a lot of the things that happen and transpire over the course of the game kind of give you that information, that confidence, that assurance on how you’re going to handle that drive and how you’re going to accomplish the task.”

  Coaches and teammates marvel at his intensity during the moment. His poise relaxes them and reduces their stress. His decisiveness in calling and executing the plays breeds confidence.

  “There’s this look in his eye and the way that he goes about calling his plays that, I don’t care if you are a coach or player, you think, ‘Man, I don’t want to be the guy that messes this up,’” Campbell said. “What makes Brees such a great leader is his intensity. You can tell by the look on his face that this is something serious to him, and players know they’ve got to do their job.”

  The best two-minute drive of Brees’ career might have come in a losing cause. Coaches and teammates still marvel at the 11-play, 50-yard drive he executed to give the Saints a short-lived 24–23 lead in the 2017 NFC divisional playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings.

  When he took the field in Minnesota that day, Brees knew exactly what needed to be done. After the touchback, the Saints took possession at their own 25-yard line with one timeout at their disposal and 1:29 on the clock. U.S. Bank Stadium, where the Vikings had won eight of their past nine games, was at peak hostility. The situation was bleak. But it was far from hopeless, especially with Brees pulling the trigger.

  The Vikings opened in their usual defensive package for these situations, a Cover 3 defense with Anthony Harris playing center field and zone coverage underneath. Harrison Smith and Xavier Rhodes bracketed Thomas underneath, forcing Brees to target alternative options on the perimeter. After a first-down incompletion, Brees threaded the needle to Josh Hill on a seam route over the middle for an 18-yard gain to the 43.

  On the next snap, the Vikings switched to man-to-man coverage, and Brees quickly spotted some confusion from nickel back Mackensie Alexander on the call. He quickly snapped the ball and delivered a strike to Ted Ginn Jr., who beat Alexander for an easy 11-yard reception and got out of bounds. Just like that, the Saints were in Vikings territory at the 46-yard line with 55 seconds left. Realistically, they would need to gain about
10 more yards to get into Lutz’s range for a go-ahead field goal attempt.

  The Vikings switched coverages again, this time to something the Saints did not expect. They went to a coverage they had not played previously in two-minute situations, a scheme known in NFL vernacular as Two Man, which aligned two safeties on each deep half of the field and the other pass defenders in man-to-man coverage underneath. It was a curveball. The Saints had not prepared during the week for the Vikings to play Two Man in this situation. And now Brees was staring at it with the play clock ticking down and a berth in the NFC Championship Game on the line.

  Brees initially tried to beat the defense by going to Thomas, but Xavier Rhodes’ tight coverage forced three straight incompletions. It was now fourth-and-10, and with the Saints’ season on the line, Brees called one of his favorite plays, Flutie. The play, named in honor of the former NFL and Boston College star, was an old standby in the Saints playbook. In fact, offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael believes it might be the most frequently called play in the Saints’ playbook.

  “Quarterbacks like plays that have answers, and Flutie has answers versus every coverage, every look, every pressure,” Brees said. “That play was probably part of Day One installs back in 2006.”

  Flutie is one of the Saints’ favorite Two Man–beaters because it features two out-breaking underneath routes, in this case by Willie Snead in the slot to the left side and running back Alvin Kamara out of the backfield to the right, which theoretically would be open against the inside leverage technique of the defense.

  “We like Flutie versus Two Man, and Drew got to it,” Lombardi said.

  With the sellout crowd roaring, Brees dropped back and fired a perfect strike to Snead between three defenders in the left flat. The ball was perfectly placed—hitting Snead just below the chin, where Brees always tries to target his receivers—and perfectly timed, arriving just after Snead made his break and before three Vikings defenders could converge on him. Brees’ pass was so perfect Connor Payton could have caught it, and the 13-yard gain silenced the crowd and got the Saints into field-goal range at the Vikings 33.

  “It was an amazing read and just a great pass by Drew,” said Chase Daniel, who was the Saints’ backup quarterback at the time. “It was such an impressive drive to me because the Vikings had never shown Two Man before and Drew had to quickly figure that out and get to [Flutie].”

  Brees added a couple more short completions to Ginn and Thomas, and Lutz drilled a 43-yard field goal to give the Saints a seemingly safe 24–23 lead with 25 seconds left.

  “That was one of the best drives I’ve ever seen,” Taysom Hill said. “My jaw hit the floor on the throw that he made to Willie Snead on fourth down.”

  It was Brees at his best. On the go-ahead drive, he completed passes to four different receivers against four different Vikings coverages. And he did it against the league’s top-rated defense on the road in one of the loudest stadiums in the league. And he did it all while making each play call on his own.

  “I was sitting up in the box, thinking, ‘Wow,’” said Joe Brady, who was in his second season as an offensive assistant on the Saints staff in 2017. “Obviously, Sean was giving his thoughts but basically it was just, ‘Here ya go, Drew. You got it.’

  “It says a lot about both Sean and Drew, that you have so much faith in a quarterback that he is going to prepare himself and you trust him that whatever play he feels like he can get into, he’s going to find a way to make it work. Essentially we were just up in the box watching one of the best quarterbacks of all time go to work.”

  Brees, Payton, and the Saints offensive staff go over the two-minute plan for each opponent during the dot meeting on the eve of the game. Brees and Payton formulate a plan based on the defensive tendencies of the opponent provided in the scouting report by the club’s pro personnel department. Brees identifies potential weaknesses in the defense from his own film study and prep work. A menu of preferred plays is listed on Payton’s call sheet. The plays are assigned one-word tags to facilitate and expedite the communication process when every second is precious.

  “It all goes back to his preparation and consistency in those moments,” Strief said. “On the fly, in that moment, processing that much information under all that pressure. That’s when that stuff pays off. It doesn’t pay off on the third play of the game when you’re trying to feel everything out. It pays off in the biggest moment, when your back is against the wall and you get a curve ball. That’s when all of those reps that you spent all that time on matters. Because now Drew has the mental capacity to sit there and analyze the defense and come up with an answer and a solution on his own. He doesn’t think about anything else.”

  Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Marrone has played and coached in the NFL for more than three decades. He said he’s never seen a synergy like the one Brees and Payton share during the two-minute drill.

  “Drew and Sean are so in tune sometimes it feels like Sean’s playing quarterback through Drew, and Drew’s coaching through Sean,” said Marrone, who served as the Saints offensive coordinator from 2006 to 2008. “When those guys get out there, it’s like they have such a great relationship and feel for each other that I’m sure if Sean went out there and played quarterback, he can go through the same reads as Drew, and Drew can coach the game the same as Sean. I mean, those guys, they’re so in sync. It’s just, I hate to say it because I’m a coach, I mean, I’m a man, but it’s beautiful to watch.”

  19. Driven to Compete

  Mark Brunell quarterbacked the Washington Huskies to the 1991 National Championship. He played 19 seasons in the NFL, earned three Pro Bowl invitations, and won a Super Bowl ring with the Saints in 2009. But one of the proudest athletic achievements of his career had nothing to do with football. It occurred in the spring of 2008, when he defeated Drew Brees in an impromptu home run derby contest at Zephyr Field near the Saints training complex.

  The competition between Brunell and Brees is still legendary around the Saints offices, not because of Brunell’s power show but because of the defiant way Brees went down in defeat. Brunell doesn’t recall exactly how many homers he hit that day off Zephrys manager Ken Oberkfell, who pitched to the group of six Saints players and coaches. All he knows is it was more than Brees, who, as a former standout baseball player in high school, surely considered himself to be the heavy favorite that day.

  And Brees smashed some impressive long balls that day, including one that landed in the swimming pool beyond the right-field fence. But what stood out to Brunell and others was the effort Brees put forth to try to overtake Brunell once he established a lead. Brees extended his session well beyond the agreed-upon 50-swing limit in an attempt to outdo Brunell.

  “The poor guy throwing batting practice almost needed to switch out for a reliever,” joked Pete Carmichael, who, as a former scholarship baseball player at Boston College, was part of the competition. “We got out there at 2:30 and the Zephyrs were supposed to take batting practice at 4:30, and I think they had to start BP under the stadium because we were eating into their time.”

  Payton, Carmichael, and Joe Lombardi were shagging balls in the outfield and began to wonder if Brees was ever going to give up. They noticed they were starting to get sunburned as Brees continued to pound away in the batter’s box.

  “At some point, there’s a law of diminishing returns on your swings, an attrition to the repetition,” Payton said. “It’s like when your golf coach tells you, ‘Enough.’ Everything from a certain point forward is going to be bad habits and blisters.”

  Brees never did catch Brunell. And the short car ride back to the Saints facility was an awkwardly quiet one. “Crickets,” as Payton described it.

  Payton related a story about a golf outing he, Brees, Taysom Hill, and Saints communications director Doug Miller made to City Park in the spring of 2018. One hole featured a blind drive over a hilly fairway. Each mem
ber of the foursome smashed his drive on the screws. When the group arrived at their balls on the other side of the hill, they were clustered almost on top of each other in the fairway. Much to Brees’ chagrin, his was the farthest from the green.

  “He was pissed,” Payton chortled. “He didn’t realize it was a one-in-500 drive for me and a one-in-250 drive for Doug. We had each just hit the best drives of our month, but, in his mind, he was clumped in with the seniors. He told Taysom that he needed to refocus his workout in the weight room. It bothered him for two holes.

  “But it’s the trait that you love about him,” Payton added. “You want him on your team. He’s extremely competitive that way, and way more often than not, he’s on the winning end of it.”

  The home run derby was Brunell’s first encounter with what Lombardi jokingly calls “the dark side” of Brees. Brunell had signed a free-agent contract with the Saints only three months earlier and was just starting to get to know the man he’d back for the next two seasons. He knew Brees’ reputation as a stellar all-around athlete. He knew he was good at many things. That day at Zephyr Field, Brunell learned that losing wasn’t one of them.

  “I loved every second of it,” said Brunell, who was a good enough prep baseball player in Santa Maria, California, to get drafted by the Atlanta Braves in 1993. “It was one of the favorite athletic moments of my life. If I brought it back up today, I’m sure he’d come up with some excuse because Drew is the most competitive person I’ve been around in my whole life. He wants to win in everything. I would go so far as to say he has to win. And it he doesn’t win, it’s just going to drive him crazy.”