Payton and Brees, стр. 35
“I don’t know any other way to operate,” Payton said. “I tell our coaches, Friday night is your night to go home. Our job is to find more plays to make the job a little easier for our players. We’re trying to reduce their stress on game days. There’s nothing like finding something late on a Wednesday or Thursday night, and it ends up being a difference-maker. That’s what drives you.”
Payton’s assistants might grouse to each other from time to time, but they know the drill. It’s all part of the Payton Way. As Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule professes, there’s no secret to the success. Successful golden nugget panning is about discipline, commitment, attention to detail, and countless hours of tedious film study. And when it all comes together on game day, there are no complaints.
“All of those hours that we’re grinding we’re trying to do one thing: we’re trying to find the very best matchups,” Campbell said. “We want to put our best guy on your worst guy. And you’ve got to freakin’ work at it. Sometimes it may be [that] you can only use this personnel group. Or you can only use this formation. Or you can only use this shift to get that one or two plays of a matchup. But that one or two plays is the difference between seven points and three points or no points. And what’s what makes the difference.”
It goes back to Saints coaches’ practice of evaluating film of opponents’ games from two or three previous seasons in an effort to find an advantage—including, for new coordinators, studying games from the coach’s previous stops to try to assess tendencies.
“We’ll go through hours and hours of tape until we finally find the gold mine—there it is, we’ve found the golden nugget,” Campbell said. “And that’s what we do. And we do it better than anybody. We’re not trying to be fancy. That’s what some people may think that we’re trying to be elaborate. We’re just trying to get freakin’ Mike Thomas on your worst guy. We’re trying to get Kamara on one of your linebackers. We’re trying to get Jared Cook on your freakin’ donkey, and we’ll see if you can cover him. That’s what we do. And we do it better than anybody else.”
Dome-ination:
2009 New York Giants, New England Patriots
The 2008 rout of the Green Bay Packers wouldn’t be the first time the New Orleans Saints offense would devastate an opponent in the Payton-Brees era. Less than a year later, they would embarrass another proud franchise with another highly rated defense.
In Week 5 of the 2009 season, the New York Giants came to New Orleans with a 5–0 record and the league’s top-rated pass defense. They were allowing just 210 yards a game and had trailed for a total of only 18 minutes and 31 seconds in their first five games combined. Their pass defense had allowed opposing quarterbacks to pass for only 104 yards a game, 61 fewer than any other team in the NFL.
Vegas oddsmakers installed the Saints as three-point favorites, essentially calling the teams even on paper. But the Saints had a built-in advantage they didn’t factor into the equation: an open date the previous week. Payton and the staff used the extra time to decipher the Giants defense, and they fixed their crosshairs on cornerback Terrell Thomas and safety C.C. Brown, a pair of inexperienced players who were thrust into starting roles because of injuries to Aaron Rouse and Kenny Phillips.
It didn’t take long for the Giants to realize they were in trouble that Sunday afternoon. After not allowing more than four plays on the opening drive of the first four games, they watched the Saints march 70 yards in 15 plays for a touchdown on their first possession. They followed that with touchdown drives of 80, 57, and 61 yards and finished the first half with 315 yards and a 34–17 lead. They scored touchdowns on five of six drives and it would have been a perfect six of six if not for a failed fourth-and-goal run from the Giants 1. At one point in the first half, Brees completed 15 consecutive passes.
It didn’t get any better for the Giants in the second half as Brees continued to strafe their secondary. As lopsided as the 48–27 final score was, it could have been worse if Payton hadn’t lifted Brees for the game’s final six minutes. Brees finished with 369 passing yards and four touchdowns on 23-of-30 passing. While targeting Brown and Thomas, he was 9-of-13 for 180 yards and four touchdowns. All nine of his completions against the duo resulted in first downs.
“I didn’t see this coming,” Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce said.
Few did. It’d been a decade since the Giants had allowed so many points. In the modern era, they’d never allowed a quarterback to post a passer efficiency rating as high as Brees’ 156.8. After allowing just six passes of 20 or more yards to their first five opponents combined, the Giants allowed seven to the Saints, plus another 19- and 18-yarder.
“It got to the point where it was almost comical,” Giants defensive end Justin Tuck said. “We couldn’t do nothing to stop them.”
Payton’s game plan was masterful. The Saints moved the pocket, used an extra offensive tackle at times to provide extra protection against the Giants’ vaunted front four, and ran passing plays out of the formations that they had previously used for the run. They put the overaggressive Brown on a string and kept the Giants defensive line off-balance with play-action passes. In 33 pass plays, the Giants failed to sack Brees and managed to hit him only twice.
“I liked what [Payton] did from a design standpoint to create windows in the Giants defense, and very subtle things he did with his offensive line,” said Fox Sports analyst Daryl “Moose”