Payton and Brees

by Jeff Duncan

  Now, in the final minute of the fourth quarter of the Saints’ 2019 season opener, all of the preparation and planning were about to come into play.

  Thirty-seven seconds was enough time for Brees to work his magic. But with only one timeout at his disposal, there was no margin for error. He would need to be perfect to march the Saints into field-goal range.

  On the sideline, Saints players and coaches consoled C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who was disconsolate on the bench. The rookie defensive back had drawn a roughing the kicker penalty moments earlier that negated Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn’s missed go-ahead extra-point attempt. The infraction gave Fairbairn a second try and he converted to give the Texans a one-point lead.

  On the Houston sideline, Watson shared a laugh with teammates. The Texans were seconds away from one of the biggest road wins in franchise history. The electrifying comeback on a prime-time stage would be a milestone moment in Watson’s nascent career.

  As the Saints expected, Texans defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel employed a conservative defensive coverage scheme designed to prevent long pass plays. Cornerbacks Bradley Roby, Aaron Colvin, Keion Crossen, and Jonathan Joseph aligned in loose man-to-man coverage about five yards off the line of scrimmage. Behind them, safeties Tashaun Gipson and Justin Reid were positioned 15 yards downfield just outside the hash marks, and safety Jahleel Addae stood another 10 yards back on the fleur-de-lis logo at midfield. To reach Texans territory against this defense, Brees would have to move the ball in bites, not chunks.

  Since they would be running a no-huddle, hurry-up offense, the Saints had their best playmakers at the skill positions on the field: running back Alvin Kamara; tight end Jared Cook; and wide receivers Michael Thomas, Ted Ginn Jr., and Tre’Quan Smith.

  As he broke the huddle and surveyed the defense, Brees processed several factors in his mind: personnel matchups; pass rush; defender leverage in coverage; route access by his receivers.

  For years now, Brees has run the two-minute offense largely by himself. Payton ceded the duty to him to expedite the play-calling and save valuable time. The Saints coaching staff trusted Brees implicitly to diagnose the defense and get the offense into the proper play at the line of scrimmage via a series of predetermined hand signals. Payton will make suggestions to Brees through the headset, but for the most part he’s standing and watching the sequence play out just like everyone else in the stadium.

  “That’s something that Drew has done for a long time, and he’s real good at it,” Payton said. “Drew has got a real good clock in his head. He understands where we are at time-wise.”

  At the snap, Brees retreated into his five-step drop and saw his first option, Thomas, double-covered by Roby and Reid on the left side of the formation. He immediately looked right and saw Joseph backpedaling in outside leverage on Ginn, a tactic designed to prevent an outside-breaking route. Bingo! He launched his pass just as Ginn was cutting inside on a 12-yard dig route. Brees never saw the pass land as end Jacob Martin swarmed him to the ground just after he released the ball. Ginn snared Brees’ pass at the 36, quickly dodged a diving tackle attempt by Gipson, and ducked ahead for another four yards to the 40. The entire sequence took less than five seconds. Ginn scrambled to his feet and tried to find umpire Alan Eck amid the chaos of players running to and from the line of scrimmage. Saints receivers had been drilled to run to the closest official and directly hand him the ball to expedite the spotting process. But on this occasion, Ginn failed to immediately find Eck amid the mayhem and a couple of extra seconds ticked off the clock. Brees finally spiked the ball at :20.

  The Saints would realistically have time for only two more plays, barring a defensive penalty.

  The Texans employed the same defense on second down, but this time Colvin aligned aggressively in press coverage against Thomas on the left side. Colvin was in his second season with the Texans after a disappointing four-year run in Jacksonville. The Saints had picked on Colvin all night, completing 7-of-8 passes on him for 106 yards. The All-Pro Thomas versus the journeyman Colvin is a matchup Brees takes every time, and Thomas delivered. With Colvin playing outside leverage, Thomas needed to be physical to separate from Colvin and access his out route. At the top of his break, Thomas quickly cut left, swam his right arm over Colvin’s shoulder, and deftly pushed him to the right. Brees didn’t hesitate. He threaded his pass into a five-yard window behind Crossen’s head and before the onrushing Reid could close on Thomas from his safety spot. Thomas snagged the ball at midfield and was snowed under at the Texans’ 49.

  As the players scrambled to the line for the next play, precious seconds ticked off the clock. Payton almost signaled to the officials to take his final timeout but hesitated at the last moment as he watched Brees direct traffic on the field. Payton understood how valuable a timeout was in this situation. With it, the Saints could call any play in their offensive game plan and still have time to stop the clock. Without it, they were handcuffed. The Texans could align their defense along both sidelines and funnel the Saints receivers into the middle of the field, forcing them into another frantic scramble to get aligned and clock the ball. Payton didn’t like those odds, so he allowed the clock to run, and Brees spiked the ball with six seconds left.

  “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 hoo
k 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 position touches the ball 65 to 70 times a game,” Payton said. “Everybody gets on the plane, and the quarterback gets on last. He gets up in the cockpit, and everyone else waits for him to land it safely or fly the whole thing into a mountain.”

  Bill Parcells, who served as Payton’s mentor during their tenure together in Dallas and advised Payton to take the head coaching job in New Orleans in 2006, was famously hard on quarterbacks. But he understood their importance in the game. He even made a list of requirements for the position, a Commandments of Quarterback Play, that he maintained and followed throughout his coaching tenure:

  I.Press or TV agents or advisers, family or wives, friends or relatives, fans or hangers-on, ignore them on matters of football; they don’t know what’s happening here.

  II. Don’t forget to have fun, but don’t be the class clown. Clowns and leaders don’t mix. Clowns can’t run a huddle.

  III. A quarterback throws with his legs more than his arms. Squat and run. Fat quarterbacks can’t avoid the rush.

  IV. Know your job cold. This is not a game without errors. Keep yours to a minimum. Study.

  V. Know your own players. Who’s fast? Who can catch? Who needs encouragement? Be precise. Know your opponent.

  VI. Be the same guy every day. In condition, preparing to lead, studying your plan. A coach can’t prepare you for every eventuality. Prepare yourself and remember, impulse decisions usually equal mistakes.

  VII. Throwing the ball away is a good play. Sacks, interceptions, and fumbles are bad plays. Protect against those.

  VIII. You must learn to manage the game. Personnel, play call, motions, ball handling, proper reads, accurate throws, play fakes. Clock, clock, clock, don’t you ever lose track of the clock.

  IX. Passing stats and TD passes are not how you’re gonna be judged. Your job is to get your team in the end zone and that’s how you’re gonna be judged.

  X. When all around you is in chaos, you must be the hand that steers the ship. If you have a panic button, so will everyone else. Our ship can’t have panic buttons.

  XI. Don’t be a celebrity quarterback. We don’t need any of those. We need battlefield commanders that are willing to fight it out every day, every week, and every season, and lead their team to win after win after win.

  Payton knew how difficult it was to find a player with all of the qualities on Parcells’ list. Franchise quarterbacks are the most valued positions in the NFL. It’s why they earn CEO-like salaries in the range of $25 million to $30 million a year.

  Payton knew a team could have success without a franchise quarterback in a given year, but to achieve the kind of sustained success he wanted in New Orleans, he knew he needed a special player at the position.

  To find their franchise quarterback, Payton and Saints general manager Mickey Loomis considered two options: they could pursue a veteran quarterback in free agency or select a prospect with the No. 2 overall pick in the NFL Draft. Southern Cal’s Matt Leinart was considered the top quarterback available, but the brain trust knew drafting one so high was a risky proposition. Loomis was an executive in the Seattle Seahawks organization in 1993 when the club used the No. 2 overall pick in the draft to select Notre Dame quarterback Rick Mirer, who spent most of his eight-year NFL career as a journeyman backup.

  The Saints preferred a veteran signal-caller, but the free-agent market was a collection of veteran journeymen like Jeff Garcia, Jon Kitna, and Josh McCown. Brees, who had made the Pro Bowl in 2004, was the most credentialed player on the market, but even he was a question mark. In the final game of the 2005 season, he suffered a 360-degree tear of the labrum, the ring of cartilage around the joint of his right shoulder, and a partial rotator cuff tear. For an NFL quarterback, it was a career-threatening injury.

  Renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews repaired the labrum with 11 surgical anchors, about eight more than is common for the procedure. The San Diego Chargers, who selected Brees in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft, were leery, and they elected to make Philip Rivers their starter, sending red flags across the league about Brees’ health status.

  The Chargers weren’t the only team concerned about Brees’ shoulder. His only serious suitors in free agency were the Saints and Miami Dolphins.

  For obvious reasons, the Dolphins were widely considered to be the favorites for Brees’ services. They had the tradition, a sunny location, and a high-profile coach in Nick Saban, who was entering his second season in Miami.

  Payton, though, was undaunted.

  From his research and film study, Payton loved everything about Brees, from his on-field decisiveness, accuracy, athleticism, and quick release to his off-field intangibles—his work ethic, intelligence, leadership skills, and winning pedigree.

  “He won a state championship as a high school player in Texas, and at Purdue he led his team to three bowl games and a Big Ten title,” Payton s
aid. “Then he went to San Diego and was able to turn that program around.”

  Payton aggressively targeted Brees in free agency as one of his first orders of business in 2006, even though Brees’ surgically repaired right shoulder was a major question mark. For Payton and the Saints, it was worth the risk. And as a former college coach, Payton loved a good recruiting battle. He was confident, despite New Orleans’ disadvantages at the time, he could win over Brees.

  Brees, meanwhile, was drawn to New Orleans’ loyalty. While other teams were backing off, the Saints were coming after him. Their confidence in him was attractive. And post-Katrina New Orleans appealed to Brees’ and his wife, Brittany’s, civic-mindedness. They saw an opportunity to make an impact on a community that desperately needed help.

  But Brees knew little about Payton, the young head coach putting the full-court press on his recruitment.

  “I knew he was a first-time head coach, young, energetic, a great offensive mind,” Brees said. “But besides that, I had never heard of Sean Payton prior to getting a call from him on the phone.”

  The Saints scheduled the first visit with Brees and rolled out the red carpet. On Saturday, March 11, Payton and Loomis flew on Saints owner Tom Benson’s private jet to Birmingham, Alabama, where Brees was rehabbing his shoulder at Andrews’ clinic. They returned to New Orleans with Brees and Brittany for a two-day courtship that included a lavish dinner at Emeril’s and tours of the city—potential neighborhoods and top golf courses. During the visit, the Saints also made it clear to Brees they would be the highest bidder for his services.