Payton and Brees, стр. 5
“I understand what he is trying to do, but he wasted too much time,” NFL color analyst Anthony “Booger” McFarland said on the ESPN Monday Night Football broadcast. “He’s got time now with six seconds left and one timeout for a quick play. But it’s got to be quick.”
The game now essentially boiled down to one play. Lutz had converted field goals from 60 yards out during pregame warm-ups, so the Saints needed to gain six or seven more yards to reach his range.
Brees quickly gathered the offense into a huddle and rattled off a handful of possible plays he might call once he was able to diagnose the defense at the line of scrimmage.
“You’re looking at so many things,” Brees would say later. “You’re looking at leverage. You’re looking at matchup. You’re looking at access. You’re assessing all of these things and I have this checklist of plays in my mind that I’m going through until I land on the one—ding, ding, ding!—that is the best option based on what they’re giving us right now.”
What Brees saw was a different defense than the one the Texans played on the previous two snaps. This time they were in man-to-man coverage across the field, each defensive back aligned opposite the Saints’ five receivers at the line of scrimmage. Linebacker Zach Cunningham manned the middle of the field as a rover. Three safeties were positioned 20 yards downfield on each third of the field.
“It was basically a prevent-type defense,” Brees said. “They did not want to give up something big.”
But the Saints didn’t need something big. They only needed seven yards.
With 20 seconds on the play clock, Brees scanned the defense and quickly eliminated one of his options. The stick route to Cook over the middle wasn’t going to work because he feared the rover might blow up the play.
With 17 seconds left, Brees signaled a route combination to the receivers by raising his right index finger above his head. Then, just as he was ready to take the snap, he noticed a flaw in the Texans coverage. While Roby and Crossen were tightly aligned opposite Thomas and Kamara to the left, Colvin unwittingly stood seven yards off the line from Ginn in the right slot.
“The Texans are playing loose coverage, I don’t agree with this,” McFarland said on the ESPN broadcast. “Too easy to get a quick completion.”
Brees saw the same thing. With 10 seconds on the play clock, he audibled again, waving off the earlier play call and signaling a new one with a waggle of his hand toward Ginn.
“He’s checking it,” McFarland said. “Brees sees it.”
Erik McCoy snapped the ball with six seconds on the play clock. Brees backpedaled into a three-step drop and fired a quick strike to Ginn, who was wide-open on a nine-yard hook route at the Houston 40. Ginn immediately fell to the turf to give himself up on the play, and Brees and Payton bolted to separate officials to call timeout. Two seconds remained on the play clock.
Brees had done it. Three plays. Three completions. Thirty-five yards in 35 seconds.
“Surgical by Brees,” ESPN play-by-play announcer Joe Tessitore said. “Absolutely surgical.”
Moments later, Lutz drilled his 58-yard field goal attempt, and the Superdome erupted in euphoria. Brees stood on the sideline, raised his right arm above his head, and pumped his fist in the air. The Saints had snapped their league-high five-game losing streak in opening games. And they had done it in dramatic fashion before a national television audience.
“Just a phenomenal job by Drew Brees,” McFarland said on the broadcast.
On the field, Texans players and coaches walked around in a daze. ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Salters found Lutz for a postgame interview and asked him what was going through his mind as Brees marched the offense down the field.
“Look, when he’s our quarterback I knew we were going to get a chance,” said Lutz, speaking for Saints fans everywhere.
None of this happened by chance, of course. The victory was the result of months of planning and preparation. It validated everything Payton and Brees believe in. Preparation. Attention to detail. Confidence, aggressiveness, and poise in the clutch.
The analytics gave the Saints a 27 percent chance to win the game. But the analytics didn’t factor into the equation Payton and Brees, the most prolific quarterback-coach combination in NFL history.
1. Finding the Pilot
No one could have known it then, but Sean Payton’s recruitment of Drew Brees in the winter of 2006 was an early indicator of the coach’s brilliance. He had never met Brees, who was the top quarterback on the NFL free-agent market at the time. There was no Kevin Bacon-degrees-of-separation connection, no prior history to work with. Payton didn’t know Brees at all. But he knew he needed him.
The Saints owned one of the worst quarterback legacies in the NFL and were coming off a grim 3–13 campaign with the inconsistent Aaron Brooks under center. The Saints hadn’t started an elite quarterback since Archie Manning played in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, a parade of journeymen and overmatched rookies had manned the position. In the 25 years since Manning left in 1981, none of the Saints’ 20 starting quarterbacks earned a single Pro Bowl invitation.
If the Saints had any hope of turning around their fortunes in their first year under Payton, they would need a top quarterback to lead them.
Having played quarterback at Eastern Illinois and coached the position previously with the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants, and Dallas Cowboys, Payton understood the importance of the role, especially in the NFL, where rules have tilted heavily in favor of the passing game. The NFL had essentially evolved into a league divided into the haves and have-nots: teams that had franchise quarterbacks and those that were trying to find one.
“The