Payton and Brees, стр. 19
Payton, meanwhile, is much more of a free spirit. Brees describes him as “outgoing and rowdy” away from the office. And while Payton has mellowed considerably from his freewheeling post–Super Bowl days, he still knows how to have a good time when the situation calls for it.
Payton has a touch of OCD symptoms. He is prone to tangents and regularly dips smokeless tobacco. For several years, he religiously wore the same visor on the sideline and chomped sticks of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum during games. More than one reporter who has visited him in his office has watched him go down a 20-minute rabbit hole while trying to find a play on his laptop computer.
“Sean will tell the same story to you over and over,” said marketing agent Mike Ornstein, a longtime friend of Payton’s, who has worked with and for the team in various capacities during Payton’s tenure. “Pete [Carmichael] and Joe [Lombardi] do a good job of playing along. They laugh every time like they’ve never heard it before.”
Payton and Brees are different people with different personalities and lifestyles. They express themselves in different ways and go about their business differently. But after 14 years and countless hours of collaboration, they are one and the same when it comes to football.
“I can’t think of another great quarterback that has had a relationship with the head coach that goes beyond just a work relationship,” said Brunell. “There’s a legitimate, sincere, real friendship there, just a deep mutual affection for one another. When you have two guys like that, typically there is one trying to up the other. They’re not interested in that. They both realize that I’m not Drew Brees without Sean Payton and I’m not Sean Payton without Drew Brees.”
7. The Sean Payton Offense
The philosophical origins of the Saints offense can be traced to Bill Walsh, Jon Gruden, and the West Coast system. But, physically, the offense was born during a meeting of the offensive staff on February 6, 2006.
On the day after Super Bowl XL, the recently hired Payton brought a copy of the Cowboys playbook he used the previous three years in Dallas and a copy of the Giants playbook he used in New York and told offensive assistant coach Pete Carmichael to make 10 copies of each. The books were dispersed to each coach at the table, and the coaches opened to Page 1 and went to work. Plays were either kept or discarded, depending upon Payton’s plan.
The playbook was still being built a month later when Brees was signed in free agency. Payton asked Carmichael, who worked with Brees the previous two seasons in San Diego, to integrate some of Brees’ favorite plays into the offense.
“Sean had a vision of where he wanted this offense to start, and we pulled plays from each playbook,” Carmichael said of the Giants and Cowboys. “Then, when we signed Drew, Sean wanted to know some of the concepts and plays that he really loved, and we incorporated those into the offense. Then, when Drew got here, we listened to his input and that’s how the playbook progressed.”
Most modern NFL passing offenses can be traced to one of two classic systems—Walsh’s West Coast offense or the Coryell system originated by Don Coryell, who coached at San Diego State in the 1960s and later with the San Diego Chargers. Traditionally, the West Coast system featured a horizontal passing attack, relying primarily on short, timing-based passes to the backs, tight ends, and receivers. The Coryell offense was more of a downfield passing game, attacking with deep and intermediate throws to the receivers.
Initially, Payton incorporated different parts of each system into his offense. Most of the passing concepts come from the West Coast system he learned during his tenure with Gruden in Philadelphia. A lot of the Saints’ initial running game was adopted from Parcells’ offense in Dallas. The pass protections came from the Giants and Cowboys.
Many differences exist between the Walsh and Coryell systems, but the most obvious is terminology. Walsh used code words to identify plays and numbers for protections. Coryell used numbers for plays and words for protections.
Just about every college and NFL team uses a passing tree numbered 1 to 9 to identify basic individual pass patterns. The different pass routes in the Coryell system are assigned digits 1 through 9.
When Brees was in San Diego, for example, one of Chargers quarterback Doug Flutie’s favorite plays was 678, which featured a dig route (No. 6) by the X receiver or split end, a corner route (No. 7) by the tight end, and a post route (No. 8) by the Z receiver or flanker. When the Saints added the play to their offense, they simply called it “Flutie.”
Payton compared the difference between the West Coast and Coryell systems to the difference between using a Mac operating system and Windows.
“All systems can give you the same type of plays,” Payton told ESPN.com in 2018. “It’s just, ‘How is it communicated? Are we naming the formation? Are we numbering the protection and then naming the route?’ It varies—and all are effective. All of us, though, are searching to streamline that constantly, so you find yourself with words that you’re implementing to be one syllable—you know, ‘wasp’—or those terms that come out of your mouth cleanly and quickly. In your hurry-up or no-huddle [offense], you might just say a word, and then everyone’s understanding, ‘It’s this play.’”
When tagging the plays, the staff tries to employ some logic or familiarity to make them easier to learn. Some are references to players. One of receiver Robert Meachem’s key plays during his time was called “Volunteer,” the nickname of his alma mater, the University of Tennessee. One of the Saints’ key plays to receiver Michael Thomas is tagged Buckeye. Another Saints play is called Shark because it