Everybody knows Sean Payton wanted to remind himself Thursday night to run the football.
Why?
Because he wrote “Run It!!!” at the top of his play sheet and the Thursday Night Football broadcast showed it clearly early in the game.
Payton on Sunday said he wasn’t too thrilled about the whole sequence during Denver’s eventual 34-27 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers.
“I don’t like the fact that the network TV cameras feel like they can zoom into our call sheet,” Payton said. “But it is what it is.”
Payton’s got a large play sheet and it ends up getting shown in some form or fashion regularly on television. But the two instances in which it’s entered the public conversation each happened on Thursday night football.
In October at Kansas City last year, a shot of Payton’s call sheet made several sections easily readable.
At that point, he shrugged it off.
“I don’t worry about it,” Payton said then. “When everyone sent that to me it was like, ‘Can you believe it?’ But the game is so spontaneous and so fast. The language, teams can look at and everything is on tape. You know that idea of signing the practice squad player off the other team right before you play them? The only benefit of that would be the health of the team. In-depth information of guys, are they healthy?”
This year, he expressed more annoyance.
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