re: Leonard Fournette and the saints visiting

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Actually we played out of the shotgun formation only 
43% of the snaps last year. I know it seemed like more but for as pass happy as our offense is that put us right dead in the middle of all the league as far as using this formation.

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Good point. This board can toss around misconceptions until most believe them as fact. The Saints run way more power than the average fan gives them credit for & they turned it up a notch higher in 2016. This is from this past season:

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Since Week 8, the Saints lead the NFL in rushing yards per game (cite the stats) behind the re-emergence of Tim Hightower and Mark Ingram as dependable workhorse ball-carriers. Hightower in particular has taken his game up a notch since being promoted to a bigger role in the backfield. Over the past two games, he has amassed 189 rushing yards on 49 attempts with a score. Most importantly, he has given the Saints' running game the kind of "thump" that had been missing since the beginning of the season.

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For Ingram, the change has resulted in fewer overall carries in each game but better production (11.3 yards per carry on 6.0 rushing attempts over the past two games). From I-formations, the veteran runner has averaged 4.7 yards per carry on an average of 3.0 rushing attempts during that span. Interestingly, Ingram hasn't logged a single carry from a shotgun formation after averaging 4.6 shotgun runs during the first seven games. Although he successfully pounded the ball between the tackles to the tune of 4.7 yards per rush out of the gun, Ingram and the offense work best when the RB1 aligns at the "dot" position.

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Now, this isn't necessarily a new trend for the Saints or Payton, as he would regularly use an extra offensive tackle at tight end during the Jimmy Graham era. But he has doubled down on the package of late. After using six-man offensive lines on 31.9 percent of the team's offensive snaps during Weeks 1-7, the Saints have featured their "heavy" package on 46.8 percent of their snaps the past two games. They have averaged 3.5 yards per play in the package during that span, which suggests the offense is able to stay on schedule when playing "big-boy football" at the line of scrimmage.

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