Chargers are bringing Saints’ scheme to LA: What will it look like? And what does it mean for Justin Herbert?
By Daniel Popper
May 12, 2021
In 2009, Brandon Staley, then a defensive line coach and special teams assistant at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., received an intimate and inside look at Sean Payton’s Saints offense, one of the premier systems in the NFL. Staley had a longstanding connection with then-Saints quarterbacks coach Joe Lombardi, who was offensive coordinator at Mercyhurst College in 2005 when Staley played quarterback there for a season. With his coaching career in its infancy, Staley joined Lombardi in New Orleans for a week, embedding in the Saints offensive meetings alongside Drew Brees.
More than a decade later, Staley, now an NFL head coach, will be bringing that same offensive system to the Chargers. He hired Lombardi as his offensive coordinator in late January. And after months of work, the initial version of the playbook is done — and in the hands of star quarterback Justin Herbert.
“It’s an offense that I know the best because I’ve known it since Joe got to New Orleans,” Staley said. “So the foundation of how we play will be that.”
The Chargers began virtual meetings the week before the draft, and Herbert is already on his way to mastering another new offense, with the help of Chase Daniel, who backed up Brees for four seasons in New Orleans and signed with the Chargers this offseason.
“Chase is an expert in this offense,” Herbert said.
Herbert said he has already been in touch with the newly retired Brees this offseason. The two quarterbacks both have worked out with private coach John Beck, and they first met after the Chargers and Saints faced off on Monday Night Football last year.
“Just being able to talk to him and see how he manages the game, how he goes about everything,” Herbert said. “I’ve got a lot to learn, so it’s been really awesome.”
In addition, Staley and Chargers general manager Tom Telesco have worked diligently to surround Herbert with coaches and teammates who will help him transition to this new system. Lombardi and Daniel, of course. But they also signed veteran tight end Jared Cook, who spent the past two seasons with the Saints. And Staley hired Frank Smith as his offensive line coach and run game coordinator. Smith was the assistant offensive line coach for the Saints from 2010-14. He also spent that past three seasons coaching tight ends in Las Vegas for Jon Gruden, who was one of Payton’s earliest mentors and influences. Gruden was the offensive coordinator with the Eagles in 1997 when Payton was the quarterbacks coach there.
Staley’s vision for his new offense is starting to crystallize, both internally and publicly.
“The spine of it will be New Orleans,” he said.
But what does that really mean?
Jeff Duncan, a columnist for The Athletic in New Orleans, wrote a fantastic and detailed book about the Saints offense titled “Payton and Brees: The Men Who Built The Greatest Offense in NFL History.” We will be using that as a guide to help paint a picture of what this new Chargers offense will look like. Lombardi, who spent 15 seasons with Payton in New Orleans, is a prominent figure in the book, so it is a good place to start.
As Duncan writes, the early version of Payton’s offense was derived from Bill Walsh’s West Coast system, a scheme predicated primarily on shorter horizontal timing routes to a wide array of skill position players — wide receivers, tight ends and backs. You can connect Payton straight back to Walsh, who won three Super Bowls with the 49ers in the 1980s. Payton coached with Gruden, who was an assistant on Mike Holmgren’s Packers staffs in the 1990s. Holmgren was Walsh’s quarterbacks coach from 1986-88.
Over 15 years, though, Payton’s scheme has evolved and developed into something far more complex — arguably the most complex offense in the NFL. Brees operated on such a stratospheric intellectual and processing plane that Payton and his assistants could add and add and add some more. Part of that, too, was the continuity with the coaching staff, as Duncan writes. Pete Carmichael, the offensive coordinator, has been on the staff since Payton was hired in 2006. Lombardi left for two seasons to call plays for the Lions in 2014 but otherwise has been with the Saints every year since 2007.
“It’s a coaching maxim, and it’s probably a good one: Keep it simple,” Lombardi told Duncan. “We don’t do that here.”
As Staley said, though, “Justin’s not Drew.” No one is Drew Brees. So the complexity of the Saints offense is not likely to be a direct carryover, especially in terms of the exhaustively long verbiage and how much the quarterback will be asked to do at the line of scrimmage. There should be elements from the Saints offense, like timing throws, specific route details and combinations and formations. But Staley said he will be “shaping” this offense for Herbert.
That means plucking concepts from other systems. Brees was perhaps the greatest processor in NFL history and lethally accurate. That is what made him a future Hall of Famer. Herbert’s skill set is different. He has a stronger arm and is bigger, faster and more athletic, though Brees, particularly early in his career, was a solid athlete. To maximize Herbert’s strengths, the Chargers will feature some aspects of a different variation of the West Coach offense — the Mike Shanahan system.
Shanahan honed his scheme as the offensive coordinator for the 49ers from 1992-94, with the mobile Steve Young as his quarterback. Shanahan arrived in San Francisco four years after Walsh moved on to coach at Stanford. Shanahan’s offense has permeated the league since he was the head coach in Washington from 2010-13. On that 2012 Washington staff, Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator, Matt Lafleur was the quarterbacks coach and Sean McVay was the tight ends coach. All three are now NFL head coaches running their own variation of the offense — Shanahan with the 49ers, LaFleur with the Packers and McVay with the Rams. Staley hired Shanahan’s QBs coach, Shane Day, as his passing game coordinator. He hired LaFleur’s offensive quality control coach, Kevin Koger, and his tight ends coach. And he worked closely with McVay in 2020 as the Rams defensive coordinator.
To take the Shanahan tree even further, Arthur Smith, now the Falcons head coach, adopted the scheme with the Titans after taking over play-calling duties from LaFleur. Gary Kubiak, meanwhile, was Mike Shanahan’s quarterbacks coach with the 49ers in 1994 and followed him to the Broncos as the offensive coordinator. Kubiak and Shanahan won two Super Bowls in Denver with John Elway.
And who was a reserve running back on those championship teams? Anthony Lynn, who implemented some of the Shanahan concepts with the Chargers last year as he overhauled the offense in the wake of Philip Rivers’ departure. Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski, too, adopted the offense from Kubiak while working with him on the Vikings staff.
Two of the tenets of that system are zone run blocking schemes and play action — including bootlegs — off those schemes. Herbert is familiar with some of these concepts from his rookie season with Lynn and obviously thrived in those types of plays. According to PFF, the Chargers used zone blocking schemes — where the offensive linemen block an area as opposed to a specific defender — on more than half their designed runs, and Herbert finished in the top half of the league in play-action rate.
Herbert said he has been watching a mix of both Saints and 49ers film so far this offseason.
“It’s kind of outside zone, inside zone, a lot of play action stuff that the 49ers do,” Herbert said. “And then you get a lot of the Saints stuff that they bring in. It’s kind of been a big combination of those two so far.”
“That tree of Kyle, Sean, Matt, Arthur, that group of guys — they probably are more similar than different,” Staley said. “I think Kyle, where that system is unique is how they design the run game. But I think that from a grouping standpoint and how we play, who we play with, it will be most like New Orleans. And then those elements that you’re aware of at the other places, specifically with some of the run, play-action keeper, (run-pass-option) game, merging some of those elements too.”
(A quick aside: For a thorough breakdown of what makes the Kyle Shanahan run scheme so unique and effective, check out this awesome piece from The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen.)
Staley hints at a crucial point in the above quote. As Duncan writes, one of the major pillars of the Saints offense that makes it so distinctive and difficult to defend is the way they use their personnel. Or, as Staley puts it, the “grouping” of their personnel.
Payton’s “offensive approach is to ‘blitz the defense’ with an array of formations, alignments and personnel groupings,” Duncan writes. And this is a philosophy that appeals to Staley.
“What I think is paramount on both sides of the ball and in the kicking game is that you use personnel groupings as a weapon because you want to put people in conflict every single snap,” Staley said in early April. “And part of the way you do that is with a variety of groupings that they have to prepare for.”
This is straight from the Sean Payton School of Coaching. And it is one area in which the Chargers offense will undoubtedly resemble the Saints offense.
Let’s go back to that Chargers-Saints Monday night game from last season to prove the points.
On their opening offensive series, the Saints ran five plays. They showed five different formations on those five plays, including four different personnel groupings. In total over those five plays, they used 11 of the 13 offensive skill players they had active for the game. The other two skill players played only on special teams. So, effectively, they used all of their active skill position players in a matter of five plays.
On the first play, the Saints came out with one tight end, one fullback, two running backs and a wide receiver. But one of the running backs, Alvin Kamara, actually lined up as a wide receiver offset off the line of scrimmage. This is another staple of the Payton offense that the Chargers will adopt — moving their versatile pieces, like Austin Ekeler, around to different alignments and positions in different personnel groupings and formations.
On the second play, the Saints come out with three wide receivers, one running back and one tight end. Only two skill players — Kamara and wide receiver Marquez Callaway — stayed on the field. This personnel grouping is commonly referred to as “11,” the first number indicating the number of backs and the second number indicating the number of tight ends.
On the third play, the Saints have two tight ends, one running back and two wide receivers on the field. The only holdover from the previous play is wide receiver Tre’Quan Smith.
On the fourth play, the Saints are back in 11 personnel, but with a wrinkle: Brees is in shotgun instead of under center.
And on the final play of the drive, before a punt, the Saints bring on Swiss army knife Taysom Hill and line him up at receiver in what is effectively 10 personnel — one running back, Kamara, and four wide receivers.
Kamara then motions out of the backfield to create a five-wide empty-backfield set at the snap. This is another facet of the Saints offense — pre-snap motion — that adds even more variety and disguise to their weaponized personnel groupings and substitutions.
Duncan writes that the Saints have used upwards of 60 different formations and groupings in a single game. And it gives even the best defensive coaches fits, which is almost certainly part of the reason why this system is so intriguing to Staley, a defensive visionary.
Duncan features this great quote from Bill Belichick in 2009: “If we took the other 15 teams we play and put all the formations and personnel groups together, it would probably be about the same as the Saints. It’s that many. Over the course of 70 plays, there are hardly any repeat formations in the game. Sometimes you end up making mistakes, blowing a timeout or something like that, and that’s an issue, too. And the Saints really try to stress you on that, probably as much as any team I can remember. It’s hard.”
The specifics of the Chargers offense will remain largely under wraps until they take the field in Week 1 in September. Staley also hired several college coaches to his staff, including former Iowa running backs coach Derrick Foster, former Pittsburgh and Maryland wide receivers coach Chris Beatty, and former Clemson graduate assistant Chandler Whitmer. The influences on the system will stretch far and wide.
But Lombardi is leading the operation. And Sean Payton’s fingerprints — especially in terms of formations and personnel groupings — will surely be all over the offense that the Chargers hope will carry Herbert to superstardom and, eventually, a Super Bowl victory.
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