Saints loading up offense to follow popular NFL trend

By Ross Jackson

The NFL is and always will be a copycat league. The New Orleans Saints are set to be at the forefront of the league’s newest trend: heavy tight end sets. 

Beginning with teams like the Los Angeles Rams and Cleveland Browns, over recent seasons teams have started to deploy much heavier usages of two or three tight end sets. The most common of which being 12 and 13 personnel. 

Personnel groupings are designated, most often, by a two-digit number. The first digit represents the number of running backs while the second highlights the number of tight ends. 

12 personnel would mean one running back and two tight ends while 13 would indicate three tight ends. 

Last season, the Rams led 13 personnel usage by deploying the grouping on 30.5% of snaps. A far cry from their usual three-wide receiver strategy. Meanwhile the Browns led in 12 personnel usage with 41.2%. 

Last year, New Orleans used 12 personnel on 16.7% of their offensive snaps (No. 24 in the league) while deploying three tight ends at the eighth highest rate in the NFL, but still only 6.8% of the time. New Orleans was top-four in three wide receiver sets, running 11 personnel 66.7% of the time. 

That is expected to be very different come 2026. 

New Orleans not only returns tight end Juwan Johnson, who had a career year with the team last season, but also added two dynamic weapons to the position. In free agency, the team added athletic pass-catcher Noah Fant and then drafted untapped but explosive tight end Oscar Delp in the third round of the draft. 

The Saints are set to be in the early wave of teams embracing this shift around the league, in an attempt to take advantage of defenses that have gotten smaller due to the usage of 11 personnel that dominated NFL offenses for many years. 

The league is a cyclical one. Offenses got lighter and faster, so defenses countered by getting lighter and faster. But now that defensive units around the NFL are often lighter and faster, offenses are shifting to getting bigger and more physical. 

The Saints are in position to be a beneficiary of the change with their quick action in retooling their weaponry to join the shift.