BALTIMORE – After putting his fingerprints all over a slugfest at M&T Bank Stadium that sometimes defied logic, gravity and surely the odds, Sean Payton took a deep breath and tried to put it in perspective.
“This was the type of game where 50 things happened,” the Saints coach calmly said to his visitors in an empty locker room after escaping with a 24-23 victory, “and you don’t remember a thing.”
Well, let me remind you, Sean.
On the game’s opening drive, Payton called for a fake punt and then went for it three more times on fourth down. The opening drive!
"It tells you a little about how you want the game played,” Payton shot back.
Then, sitting at a table in his private dressing room adjacent to the locker room, he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a thick folder. Inside were all sorts of reports to guide the approach for the NFL’s best matchup of Week 7 – featuring Payton’s team that led the NFL in scoring against a Ravens outfit fortified by the No. 1-ranked defense – on papers marked up by a highlighter.
“Early in the week, we figured 21’s the number,” Payton recalled.
That’s because, dating to the start of last season, the Ravens were 13-1 when their opponent scored fewer than 21 points … and 0-8 when the other team scored at least 23 points.
Payton rips off several of these statistical patterns, including one that provided a big clue about his aggressiveness on the first drive – which, by the way, ended with a turnover. In the previous 22 games the Ravens were 13-0 when leading at halftime, 0-9 when trailing at the break.
The message: Start fast.
Just don’t suggest that Payton – who made arguably the gutsiest call in Super Bowl history when he dialed up an onside kick to open the second half of XLIV against the Colts – is ruled by analytics. That’s actually rather insulting to a man who tries to balance data with gut instinct and institutional intel.
“That’s not analytics,” he said, referring to the first drive. “I don’t want anybody to tell me what I should do. Because what they can’t factor in is that I have a backup left guard playing, and what if (Terrell) Suggs is kicking my right tackle’s ass?”
Call it what you want, but it was a winning formula for the Saints, who won a gritty game when Drew Brees joined the NFL’s 500 touchdown passes club but also threw for a season-low 212 yards. New Orleans rallied from a 10-point deficit and converted four of five fourth-down calls, including a sneak-reach by Brees with about six minutes to play that led to the go-ahead score. They got lucky, too: Justin Tucker, the NFL’s best kicker, missed an extra point with 24 seconds left that would have tied the game.
Some of Payton’s gambles might have been just as weird to fathom as a Tucker miss. But they surely set a tone to show what it would take to beat the Ravens in their own house.
“We weren’t throwing caution to the wind,” he said. “But we were going to play this thing to win.”
So that explains the direct snap to backup quarterback Taysom Hill, the upback in punt formation, near midfield on the first fourth-down stunner of the day. It followed the designs of 70-year-old special teams coach Mike Westhoff, who came out of retirement last year to join Payton’s staff.
“When you’re at Mike’s age, you’re playing with house money,” Payton said. “We got him off a fishing boat in Florida to come back and help us. But it’s always well-thought-out and always a design.”
Hill, like the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, provides an X-factor as a Wildcat quarterback. But his pitch-out to Alvin Kamara at the 4-yard line went awry to end that first drive.
In retrospect, as he provided intimate access to how a coach processes his decisions following a game, Payton thought he should have kicked a field goal on the one fourth-down that didn’t work.
He acknowledges adrenaline became a factor in the 20-play drive.
“You’re so invested in that drive,” Payton said. “Really, knowing the type of game this was going to be, it would have been smarter to kick that.”
I also wondered why Payton didn’t call for a field goal attempt, from around 35 yards, on fourth-and-1 from the 17, a call that might have tied the game. Instead, Brees reached over the pile and snatched the ball back, to get the first down. That led to TD pass No. 501, a 5-yarder to Michael Thomas.
“That’s who he is,’ Saints tight end Benjamin Watson told USA TODAY Sports, referring to Payton.
Watson, by the way, caught Brees’ 500th TD pass late in the second quarter, which puts the iconic passer in a club that only has three other members: Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Tom Brady.
“He wants to be aggressive," Watson said. "Sometimes, you roll the dice. It builds confidence … that he’s willing to believe in us to call those type of plays that some people say aren’t smart.”
Payton actually restrained himself, too, deciding twice to kick extra points rather than going for two – even after personal foul penalties in both cases left the Saints a yard from the end zone.
No, he’s not always easy to figure, when it comes to going for broke or not.
“It has to be calculated,” he said, alluding to matchups and situations. “You have to love some stuff, too.”
As he left with a victory, though, Payton, as confident as ever, realized that he doesn’t have all the answers. If the Tucker miss didn’t remind him of the weirdness that happens on a regular basis in the NFL, he knows what’s next as the Saints play on Sunday night at Minnesota: Revisiting the Minneapolis Miracle that ended the Saints’ last season in January dramatic fashion.
No, the game plans, analytics and hunches don’t cover it all. Sometimes, stuff happens.
“I’ve got Teddy B. with me now,” Payton said, referring to backup quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who spent last season working his way back from a knee injury with the Vikings. “Hopefully, he brings the mojo.”
Maybe that’s the ultimate X-factor.