Payton and Brees, стр. 26
Though the Saints often repeat some of the same plays, they’ll run them from different alignments with different players to confuse defenses and keep them from identifying what they’re looking at.
“They window dress [the offense] a thousand different ways” to create confusion in the defense, Ravens Coach John Harbaugh said.
The Saints pull off these elaborate disguises because of the versatile way they employ their perimeter players. Most of their skill-position players can and will play more than one position. The receivers can play split end, flanker, or slot. Tight ends can play fullback. Running backs align at wide receiver. Fullbacks play tight end.
The players come and go, but the packages carry over year to year. The Pony package, featuring two running backs, was used extensively during the early years of the Payton-Brees era, when Reggie Bush and Deuce McAllister were in their primes. It was highlighted again when Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara teamed up in the same backfield for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
“You’ve got to have versatile players to do that,” Brees said. “When you have that type of versatility, these are things that defenses have to stress about. How are we defending this guy or that guy? They’re the ones who have to react to us.”
This hybridization creates more prep work for the Saints players, but it has several benefits for the Saints. First and foremost, it allows the offense to be malleable from play to play and create confusion for the defense, depending on how they choose to defend the Saints. Second, it helps the offense withstand injuries that might decimate other clubs. And third, it forces opposing teams to prepare for myriad possibilities, all the while knowing that only so many of them will be used during a game and there will likely be new ones they haven’t seen before.
“It really adds into the preparation part of it, because you have to, although they won’t use all those packages in a game, you certainly have to have calls ready in preparation for it,” Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. “They’ve got a big playbook, and when you go through the years and different matchups in different ways they feature the guys, you have to have a bunch of calls ready.”
No player better exemplifies this multiplicity than Taysom Hill, the backup quarterback Payton has turned into a star since signing him as an undrafted free agent in 2017. Hill is a quarterback by trade, but he has become a Swiss Army knife in New Orleans thanks to Payton’s creative mind. In the 2019 season, Hill lined up at five different positions: wide receiver (116 plays), tight end (85), quarterback (41), H-back (17), and fullback (5). His versatility creates a guessing game for defensive coordinators every time he breaks the huddle. Do coordinators defend him with an extra linebacker to try to stop the run? Or do they deploy a safety to cover him as a tight end or receiver?
One of Payton’s favorite ways to use Hill is in three-tight-end sets with Jared Cook and Josh Hill, a grouping the Saints employed 22 times in 2019. They used a similar personnel package in 2010 with Jeremy Shockey, Jimmy Graham, and David Thomas. The three-tight-end sets put defenses in a quandary because the Saints can either run or pass out of the package depending on how the opponent elects to defend it. If the defensive coordinator plays more defensive backs to guard against the pass, then the Saints can quickly motion into a heavy formation with both tight ends in-line and run the powerful Hill at the undersized unit. If the defense goes heavy with extra linebackers, then the Saints can use motions to get the fleet Cook or Hill matched up against a slower linebacker in space.
“They can get into a three-wide [receiver] package with all tight ends in there because they’ve got some good, [athletic] tight ends,” former Ravens defensive coordinator Greg Mattison said. “What they do by doing that is it forces you sometimes on defense to stay more basic in what you’re calling. You can’t load up a run defense when you say [their] tendency is [running the ball], because they could spread you all out, and now you’ve got a disadvantage.”
Former Buffalo Bills head coach and longtime NFL defensive coordinator Rex Ryan said the Saints’ multiplicity forced him to drastically reduce his play call sheet during games when he coached against them.
“We realize it puts defenses on their heels,” Lombardi said.
Once teams go simple, the Saints are masters of taking advantage of defensive tendencies and dictating matchups to the opponent by employing certain personnel packages. To that end, the Saints use every active skill-position player available each game.
“We spend a lot of time in our meetings talking about personnel groupings, not only talking about [receiver] splits and areas of the field they’re going to get to but as we’re going through each play, we discuss who exactly will be running those plays,” Carmichael said. “We do a great job of making sure that the right 11 players are on the field for each play. That is one of the most unique things we do. After all this time, we have a feel for each play and what kind of bodies and characteristics are needed to run it effectively.”
For example, Lombardi said most defensive coordinators will call certain plays with specific personnel groupings to counter an offense when it uses 11 personnel, NFL terminology for a popular personnel grouping featuring three wide receivers, one tight end, and one running back. But against the Saints, the 11 personnel grouping is more complicated than most teams.
“With us, it’s 11 [personnel] but with these receivers and this tight end and there’s three different forms for