New Orleans ? There were nights when Sean Payton would sit in his office on the second floor of the Saints’ training headquarters and get the urge to run an idea by quarterback Drew Brees.

“I might call him on the cell phone trying to get him at home and he’s one floor beneath me,” Payton said. “He spends a lot of time in the office. He’s here on the off days. He’s here at night.”

The New Orleans Saints reached Sunday’s NFC Championship game on the strength of the NFL’s No. 1 offense, an attack devised by a crafty rookie coach and directed by his hand-picked quarterback.

Payton had been a quarterback himself, although he never amounted to much as a pro. His only taste of the NFL was during the 1987 players strike, when he appeared in three games as a replacement player with the Chicago Bears.

He became a college assistant coach shortly thereafter and an NFL assistant a decade ago, usually handling quarterbacks, play-calling or both. When he took his first shot as a head coach a year ago with the rebuilding Saints, a team that had gone 3-13 in 2005, his philosophy was clear.

“It starts with the quarterback,” he would say repeatedly.

That was a position he knew from personal experience, after all. And he wanted his quarterback to be someone who could grasp his variation of the West Coast offense, an attack that places running backs and receivers in wide-ranging formations and gives the quarterback the flexibility to throw to any of them.

When the San Diego Chargers allowed Brees to test free agency last winter, Payton sensed the Saints had the opportunity to get exactly what they needed. The only problem was that Brees was coming off complicated throwing shoulder surgery, so banking on him seemed like a gamble at the time.

NEW ORLEANS QUARTERBACK DREW BREES celebrates after beating Philadelphia in the NFC divisional playoffs. The Saints topped the Eagles, 27-24, on Jan. 13.

Not anymore.

Brees threw for an NFL leading 4,418 yards and 26 touchdowns, leading the Saints’ remarkable worst-to-first story that seemingly all of America is following now. Through it all, the strong bond between quarterback and coach has been an underlying theme.

Payton readily invites Brees’ input in the game plan as if Brees were part of the coaching staff. Brees doesn’t hesitate to propose ideas or voice his concerns.

“They’re as tight as a head coach and quarterback could be,” center Jeff Faine said. “When Drew hasn’t liked something, it wasn’t in the play book for next week.

“For Drew to be successful, he needed the right offense, and for coach Payton to be successful, he needed the right quarterback,” Faine said.