Basically, Reid's offense rank on the lower end of personnel grouping and Payton and Nagy are on the high end.
For Payton, switching personnel groupings is part of how he tries to break tendencies, and the
Saintstook time to analyze theirs during their first-round bye. The
Saints have scored touchdowns out of 13 unique personnel packages this season, the most in the NFL. No surprise, the
Rams have scored TDs out of just three, tied with the
Miami Dolphins for the fewest.
Asked Thursday
about those numbers, Payton told reporters: "Well, it's not who's on the field, it's what you're doing with them on the field. And I think Sean (McVay), they do a great job of, 'Man, here comes the weak zone, the wide zone. Here comes the weak zone fallback. Here comes the play-action off of it. Here comes a screen off of it.' And there are so many of these concepts that start off looking the same that are different. They're in tighter splits. They spray the releases. They have speed. So when you combine a great scheme with extremely talented players, it doesn't matter if there's 14 different personnel groupings or two, there's no prerequisite there."
At one point this season, then-
Buccaneers coach Dirk Koetter said the
Saints had shown 28 different personnel groupings.
"It's a lot for everybody to figure stuff out,"
Saints veteran tight end
Benjamin Watson told me this season. "Guys have to memorize when they're in, when they're out. When you look at our personnel group list, it's very extensive. And it can be quite challenging at times, especially during the game when they're yelling out personnel groups and some of them may sound the same, but everybody stays in tune. ... You want to make [the defense] sub, and then if they don't, you want to get a mismatch on the field."
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap30...vays-sean-paytons-differing-offensive-methods