2020 offensive strategy hypothesis

For this thread, let’s not argue over whether Brees can “throw” a long pass or not, that’s been discussed in other threads and can be argued there.

I have a hypothesis that the Saints 2020 offensive strategy is setting up the defense for a championship run.

Here’s what I observe:

We all liked seeing those deep passes to Devery Henderson and Meachem back in the days. Those were quick strike offense days, upside is we scored and scored fast. Downside is we sent the defense out there fast and left them gassed.

This year it’s possible Sean Payton is purposely creating an offensive to methodically move down the field versus going for splash plays.

Take for example our time of possession I manually calculated:
So the offense is focused on:

1. You take Drew’s strength of accuracy and keep it at a high level by throwing more short passes that have a higher probability of completion and get yardage to help move the chains.

2 You take your chances on Kamara with screen passes to get a few yards here and there while moving the clock.

3. You use your run game and hope they pick up an average of 5 yards per carry (Kamara at 4.9), so a couple runs can hypothetically get you a first down each time. All while moving the clock.

Now suddenly you see stats like:
You listen to that Brees interview on the Rich Eisen show and when asked about the long ball, you hear him say “If the opportunity is there, and that’s what it takes to win, then that’s what we’ll do”.

The long ball may be in the game plan for a game this year, but in general I see a trend developing with us “wanting” to methodically move down the field.

This points to the Saints 2020 offensive philosophy asking Drew and the running game to keep things short for the long game. We may not score 40+ points, but we don’t need to if we keep the opponent’s offense off the field along with our defense off the field.

Let’s finish strong on the second half and win!