Payton and Brees, стр. 76
The Indianapolis Colts came to New Orleans in a tailspin after losing five of their previous six games. They were still reeling from the stunning retirement of Andrew Luck in the preseason. What’s more, the Saints were coming off a tough loss to the San Francisco 49ers the previous week and would be honoring the 2009 Super Bowl team. So Reich knew his Colts (6–7) would need to play well to upset the Saints (10–3) in the Superdome on Monday Night Football. But he fully expected them to be competitive. After all, six of their seven losses had come by seven points or less.
Brees opened the game by completing his first seven passes and staking the Saints to a 3–0 lead. He threw his first incomplete pass on the second play of the second quarter, when he rushed a throw in the right flat to avoid pressure and missed Latavius Murray on a checkdown. He wouldn’t throw another incompletion the rest of the game.
With Brees dissecting the Colts defense with pinpoint accuracy, the Saints scored on their first six drives and took a shocking 34–0 lead into the fourth quarter. By then, the only suspense involved Brees’ pursuit of history. When the Saints took the field early in the fourth quarter, he needed one more completion to surpass Philip Rivers’ record for completion percentage in a game. A quick pass to Michael Thomas in the left flat secured the milestone, and Brees yielded to Teddy Bridgewater the rest of the way.
Brees’ final numbers were staggering: 29-of-30, 307 yards, four touchdowns. One of those scoring passes—a five-yarder to Josh Hill in the third quarter—gave Brees 541 in his career, surpassing Peyton Manning in the NFL record books.
“He was outstanding tonight,” Sean Payton said. “He was efficient, and it was impressive. As a play-caller, you begin to gain confidence and your [call] sheet looks a lot bigger when he’s playing like that.”
It was a vintage Brees performance. He spread the ball to nine different receivers. Four different Saints caught touchdown passes. He wasn’t sacked and was hit just twice in 30 drop backs.
“He has done that to a lot of defenses,” Reich said. “I didn’t realize it, but I looked up there at one time and he was 27-of-28 or something. When he gets like that, I don’t know anybody that can stop him. I mean 29-of-30, he has proven it year in and year out for a very long time. Even when you have a guy covered, he really isn’t covered. He always finds a hole. He can do that as well as anybody who has ever played the game.”
For Brees, it was another epic performance on Monday Night Football. A year earlier, he broke Peyton Manning’s record for career passing yards against the Washington Redskins on Monday night. Now, a year later, he set the mark for all-time touchdown passes, while improving his record to 11–5 in Monday night home games at the Superdome.
“It was special, everything about the night,” Brees said. “I’m not sure how we got here. It just, kind of, makes your whole life and career flash before your eyes. I never thought that I would have had a chance to be a part of something like this; and, just looking at the entire journey, 19 years, 5 years in San Diego and 14 years here, all of the incredible teammates and coaches that I have had the chance to play with and for, [and] this team right here is very special. Of course, our fan base, the Who Dat Nation, everybody in the dome tonight, everybody watching tonight, loved ones, my family, my kids here, both of my college roommates, who are my best friends in the world, they were here with their kids. It was just an incredible night, incredible experience, (and an) incredible moment to be able to share that with so many people, because all of them are a big part of it.”
26. A Tree Grows in Baton Rouge
Drew Brees, Sean Payton, and Mickey Loomis watched LSU’s 47–25 rout of Clemson in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game on January 13, 2020, from Payton’s luxury suite at the Superdome. At one point, Payton asked Loomis for his binoculars and trained them on the LSU coaches’ box.
“I just want to make sure we’re looking at the same Joe Brady,” Payton quipped about the Saints’ former offensive quality control coach, who in one season became the hottest assistant coach in college football after transforming the LSU offense into a juggernaut.
Brady wasn’t the only thing that looked familiar to Payton that night. The offense the LSU Tigers used to run roughshod over the Clemson Tigers and the rest of college football in 2019 was essentially Payton’s scheme, give or take a tweak here or there. The passing concepts were directly from Payton’s playbook, as was the offensive philosophy of utilizing quick timing throws by the quarterback and spreading the ball to all five skill-position players. There were some minor differences. Brady employed a read-option running game that he learned from Joe Moorhead when they worked together on the Penn State coaching staff. LSU also operated out of an empty backfield set 85 percent of the time, considerably more than the Saints did with Brees. But otherwise the offense was heavily influenced by Brady’s two years in New Orleans.
“The plays that we’re running here, the system that we’re running here, the vision, the type of players that we’re trying to recruit here, it’s all things that I took from New Orleans,” Brady said before the 2019 season.
That’s why Brady had LSU quarterback Jow Burrow watch film of Brees and the Saints offense throughout the 2019 offseason to become better