Play Action! How Come You Work So Good?

I think this is Tom Coughlin in the postgame press conference

  After watching the Saints' glorious rout of the Football Giants, the thing that stood out most to me from that game was the effectiveness of the play action pass.  That's not because the Saints don't usually run it(they do it all the time), or because they're not usually pretty effective with it( it seems to be Brees' bread and butter play type this year).  It's the way they ran it, and how effective it was...all day...against a very formidable defense.

  Play action success is traditionally predicated on the effectiveness of the running game.  If you can't get your backs out of the backfield, you're not going to pull a lot of coverage into the box, and you're not going to trick a lot of defenders into stepping into the line.  As a result, teams don't usually lead in with play action.  On Sunday, the Saints began the play action attack before they even bothered to try a single run.  This seems like a clever ploy to start a game with, as opening drives are usually pretty vanilla, with one or two cunning play attempts thrown in to hopefully toy with the minds of the defense.

  But the Saints stuck with it, and ran a ton of play action throughout the first half, and into the third quarter.  And it was absurdly effective!  Three of Brees' four touchdowns included some play action motion.  One included a presnap motion by the halfback, followed by a fake handoff, resulting in a pass to a wide-open Marques Colston.

  I can think of a number of reasons this might work so well, but I wonder exactly why it continued to for so long in the game.  Even though the Saints ended the game favoring the run slightly over the pass by number of plays, that was most likely due to the enormous lead they held for 90% of the game.  While their total yards rushing was an impressive 133, their yards per attempt stat was down to 3.4, indicating that they weren't all that effective rushing, just persistent, keeping in mind the almost constant two possession lead they had.  Was it the obvious probability of a constant running attack,  due to the big lead, that prevented the Giants from adjusting?  Was it the success on the ground in previous weeks that sold the run before the Saints even started playing?  Are the Giants' linebackers and secondary just that bad?  With a pass rush as effective as New York's, you would think at some point they would decide, 'to Hell with the run threat, we need to stop Brees from shredding us'.  They never did.  At least not for any positive result.

  This didn't start in week 6.  It was just most obvious last week.  But the Saints have been running multiple back and tight end sets a lot more frequently this year than in years past, and a lot less empty back, particularly in 3rd and short and red zone situations.  The bootleg makes more sense for a short QB like Brees when your taking all your snaps under center, so maybe it's just a symptom of the change in offensive mentality, or a "why not" move when you're leaving more pass protection back so often.  Whatever the reason, it appears to be a game plan, rather than a situational trick.  And it works without the benefit of an established run threat.  In fact, it may help the run more than the run helps it.  Whatever the magic is, it is working like gangbusters, and I couldn't think of any precedent for this offensive style's success.  Did Len Dawson do this better with the Chiefs?  Is this a more common phenomenon than I think?  Am I making more of it than it really is?  Or is this really something?