Payton and Brees, стр. 23
“Sean looks at it and says, ‘What fits our personnel best?’” Carmichael said. “Is it the power schemes? Is it the zone schemes, and is it inside or outside zone? We’ve always had those kinds of concepts in our offense, but it’s more like what are we making our focus on this year based on our personnel and then we incorporate them into the offense.
“I can remember the night before the [2006] draft we found out we were going to end up with Reggie Bush, and the next day there was 10 new formations on everybody’s desk.”
Where the Saints offense has taken on a life of its own, though, is in pre-snap adjustments they’ve added to counter opposing defenses. The Saints use a series of code words they call tags to communicate these adjustments on each play. Many of the plays also have run-pass options, meaning two plays are actually called in the huddle, giving Brees the option to change the play according to the defensive look he sees at the line of scrimmage.
“The offense has become so complex because the answer isn’t always so easy as, well, check to this run,” Strief said. “Instead, it’s we need to have a mechanism now to bring this receiver down, and what does Drew do to motion him down? He’s going to cover the force, and it’s going to change this scheme over here, so do we have to signal it? Do we have to call it something? Can Drew handle it? Do the other guys even have to even know about it? And then once you have that mechanism, it’s now a tool in the offense and it can be used whenever. All those adjustments and these little solutions that have been found over the years do certain things and they add up.”
As the Saints have incorporated these nuances into the system, the in-huddle play calls have grown lengthier and lengthier over the years.
Just a few examples:
Full Left Twin Y Orbit Q8 Kill Toss 39 Michael
Bunch Right Tare Slash 37 Weak F Kill Q8 Solid Z Speed Smash
Gun Flex Right Stack 394 Dragon Smoke Kill Turbo Sucker Right
The code words indicate different things to the offense.
Full Left Twin Y is the formation, an alignment with two tight ends (the “Ys”) on the left side.
Orbit is a pre-snap motion.
Dragon Smoke designates a route concept by the receivers.
The numbers—39, 37, 394—are pass protections, with the 3 signifying a three-step drop by the quarterback.
In general, the longer the play call, the more information Brees is communicating to the rest of the offensive players.
“[Brees] can call a little bit lengthier play call in the huddle, but it’s letting everybody else know what to do,” Payton said. “It takes some of the pressure off the other guys but puts a little bit on Drew’s plate. That’s why our vocabulary is expanded on in-the-huddle calls.”
Former Saints quarterback Garrett Grayson, the team’s third-round pick in 2015, admitted that he struggled to master the verbose calls and communicate them with authority in the huddle during his first few years in New Orleans.
When Teddy Bridgewater took over the offense after Brees was injured in 2019, the play calls weren’t as long. And they wouldn’t be as involved if Hill took over the offense, either.
“It’s a coaching maxim and it’s probably a good one: Keep it simple,” Lombardi said. “We don’t do that here.”
Over the years, the challenge for the Saints has come in trying to keep the offense at the PhD level for Brees while still making it work for the other players, who don’t have the same mastery of the system. It’s one of the reasons new players, especially rookies, struggle to make an impact early in their Saints careers. The learning process can be formidable and, in some cases, confounding.
“When you’re building the playbook, everything makes sense and there’s a logic to the terminology,” Carmichael said. “These formations are all called this for a reason. Then, all of a sudden, you make a tweak the week you’re playing the 49ers, and we call it ‘49er Right.’ Well, that formation just stays in the playbook, and sometimes it’s a little bit more of a challenge for a new player coming in, saying, ‘That makes sense. All these terms start with [the letter] T if you’re in 13 personnel. Wait, 49er Right? Where did that come from?’ Giant Panther, what’s that?’ Well, they’ve stayed in the playbook because they work. And that could be a challenge for new players.”
The Saints offense has morphed and evolved so much over the years, Lombardi jokingly compares it to the Winchester Mystery House, the infamous California mansion with architectural oddities such as doors and stairs that go nowhere, windows overlooking other rooms, and stairs with uneven risers.
“One of the things about an offense that has evolved like ours is there are a lot of hallways that lead to nowhere,” Lombardi said. “We’ve just become so much more complex.”
The danger with becoming so complex is a potential breakdown in efficiency. More offense doesn’t necessarily translate to better, more efficient offense. Information overload can often paralyze players and lead to mental errors. The extra bells and whistles might look great on the whiteboard, but they can prove counterproductive if they cause pass-catchers’ heads to swim in the lineup.
The reason this hasn’t happened in New Orleans is largely because of Brees. In addition to being one of the smartest quarterbacks in the NFL, someone capable of processing the myriad nuances added to the offensive package, he’s also someone who has an almost insatiable desire to learn, who can’t get enough of the process. Former Saints offensive tackle Jon Stinchcomb refers to Brees as “the supercomputer” because of his staggering ability to process information and then transfer it to