Payton and Brees, стр. 27
And when defenses go simple against a quarterback as talented and experienced as Brees, he often has a field day. Therein lies the conundrum.
“They force you to simplify,” Mora said. “When you get simple, Drew Brees knows where you’re going to be, and he knows where to go with the ball.”
If a defense has a weakness, Payton and Brees will find it and attack it, using players and positions like chess pieces to force the hand of the defense and create mismatches.
A 2010 game against the Los Angeles Rams exemplified the Saints’ blitz-the-defense strategy. From the opening snap, the Saints had the Rams on their heels with an aggressive, up-tempo attack. The Saints used a different personnel grouping on their first six plays. They alternated backs and receivers on almost every down. By the eighth snap of their opening 13-play drive, all 12 skill-position players had been on the field for at least one play. The rundown of running backs on those eight plays: Reggie Bush, Pierre Thomas, no back, Chris Ivory, Bush and Thomas, Thomas, Bush and Ivory.
“We moved in and out of a lot of different personnel early on—three tight ends, one tight end, three running backs, no running backs,” Payton said later. “The personnel was constantly changing early to create indecision and to slow down any type of plan they might have.”
While the plan was impressive, the execution was even more remarkable. There were no dropped passes or mental errors. Despite the fast pace and hectic substitutions, the Saints committed only one penalty on the first two series.
The Saints averaged six yards a play and compiled 12- and 13-play touchdown drives to start the game. The Rams saw that three-tight-end package Mattison talked about on seven of their first 21 plays. Brees completed 13 of 15 passes in the first quarter for 97 yards and two touchdowns. Eight of his completions were to backs and tight ends. Before the Rams could catch their breath and make their defensive adjustments, the Saints led 14–0 and were on their way to an easy 31–13 victory.
“I think you spend so much time trying to figure out what the exact personnel group is in the game and what you want to be [in defensively to defend it], and then you are late getting in the play call,” said Tennessee Titans coach Mike Vrabel, a former star linebacker for the New England Patriots. “And they operate so efficiently in and out of the huddle. The way Drew commands the huddle and operates, then you’re behind, you’re scrambling. You’ve just got to get a call in and get ready and get adjusted.”
Payton unveiled an unconventional play against the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018 to have just such an effect. The play featured all three of the Saints quarterbacks—Brees, Hill, and Teddy Bridgewater—and only resulted in a one-yard run by Hill. But that wasn’t necessarily the point. The unusual look forced the Eagles defenders to scramble.
“Part of it, really, is thinking of something that they [the Eagles] haven’t seen,” Payton said. “That’s the job of a game-planner. You want eight heads to turn to [Eagles veteran safety] Malcolm Jenkins and be like, ‘What do we do?’”
ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski calls it “renting space in the defense’s mind.”
In that same game, Payton built his game plan to target the Eagles’ injury-ravaged secondary. Philadelphia entered the game without three of its four starters in the defensive backfield.
Further, starting cornerback Sidney Jones, who began the season as a backup, was coming into the game with a hamstring injury. The Saints attacked him from the opening snap. Payton ran three of their first four plays right at Jones. He lasted 22 plays before leaving the game with an injury. The Eagles’ other starting cornerback, Avonte Maddox, left even earlier than that, hitting the sideline after 18 plays. Payton mercilessly attacked their inexperienced backups for the rest of the game. They employed a heavy diet of multiple-receiver sets to stretch thin the Eagles’ defensive backfield and Brees carved it up, completing 23 of 30 passes for 363 yards and four touchdowns. His quarterback rating for the game was a near-perfect 153.2. The Saints routed the Eagles 48–7, the worst loss ever delivered to a defending Super Bowl champion.
“The thing that I’ve always respected about Sean competing against him [when Payton was with] the Giants and the Cowboys is that he forces you to play against every personnel group known to man,” said longtime NFL defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who coached on Payton’s staff for three seasons from 2009 to 2011. “He forces you to put every personnel group you have on the field. And then if he can figure out, ‘Hey, that fourth corner, that third corner, that third linebacker isn’t really as good,’ then he forces you to keep that group on the field.”
The Saints were the only team in the NFL to start a different offensive lineup in all 16 games for each of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons. In the past decade, they have annually ranked among the league leaders in most unique offensive lineups. They are the only team in the NFL to rank in the top five in this category each of the past six seasons.
“They throw the whole sink at you early with their personnel groups and formations, their shifts and motions and different concepts,” said Rich Gannon, the CBS Sports NFL analyst, who won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award in 2002 while running a similar version of the Saints offense under Coach Jon Gruden. “It’s really their way of blitzing the defense. It’s personnel that come on and off the field. It’s