Sean Payton has a story for just about everything.
He uses them to make a point or teach a lesson. Flash some charm or establish control.
Reminisce about good times past or forecast the future.
He has one he likes about Drew Brees on the night they played their first game together at the Superdome in New Orleans, late September 2006.
Brees got stuck in traffic on I-10 and was late getting to the stadium for Monday Night Football against Atlanta. Then, he got to the parking ramp, which had low clearance.
“He pulls in and his roof gets stuck in the parking garage. You can’t make this up,” Payton regaled last summer. “He leaves the keys in the car, wedged in the cement concrete building, and runs down the hallway.
“I’m sitting there, and it’s right at two hours (before kickoff), and I’m like, ‘Glad you could make it.’ I’m just a mess now because he’s (there) four hours before the game normally.”
The Saints won that night to get to 3-0. They started 5-1 and stormed to the NFC Championship Game in Year 1. Then the pairing proceeded to make the city and the stadium their home for 14 years together.
They won often. They won big. They won easily. They faced scandal and hardship, too, over the years, but they became part of the fabric of the city. Inextricably linked to both the place and each other.
Now Payton leads the Broncos to the Superdome and in the process will for the first time occupy the unfamiliar half of the most familiar stadium he’s ever been in. It may be the most uncomfortable he’s felt there since that day 18 years ago when Brees crunched the top of his Land Rover.
It’s always a little strange, after all, going back to somewhere you spent so much time.
“I have no idea where the buses pull up,” Payton said Tuesday. “It’ll just be a new (experience).”
New and old at the same time.
Nostalgia will pump through the building between Payton — and the nearly two dozen Broncos staffers and players who used to work or play in New Orleans — being back, the induction of Brees into the Saints’ Hall of Fame and all of the former players who will be on hand to see both.
But while that fondness clearly remains in Payton, this world is a long time gone for him in a way that is not necessarily so true for Brees, the Saints and the city of New Orleans.
He’s headlong into trying to crack the code on delivering the Broncos back to relevance, and that job has already proven far tougher than the one he had starting with the Saints.
He’s trying to overcome a relatively slow start to his tenure. Denver is 10-7 since this time last year but 11-12 overall under Payton and still without a playoff appearance since Super Bowl 50.
He’s operating in a division run by a surefire Hall of Fame quarterback/coach pairing in Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, the likes of which never existed in the NFC South.
He’s now coaching a quarterback he sees as the long-term answer in Bo Nix, but that means navigating the choppy waters of having a rookie at the position for the first time in his career. Brees had questions about his health in 2006, sure, but he’d also been to a Pro Bowl.
So in all those ways and more, the primetime celebration of what used to be in the Bayou also places in sharp contrast what is still nascent at best and in many ways nonexistent in Denver.
“Anywhere you go, they’re so appreciative of Sean Payton and what he was able to build,” television analyst and former Saints linebacker Scott Shanle told The Denver Post recently. “The last couple years they haven’t been a playoff team but there’s no doubt the New Orleans Saints are where they are now — a destination for free agents and top-tier coaches and things like that — because of Sean Payton.”
A savior in New Orleans, Payton is credited with bringing a city back to life after Hurricane Katrina and delivering the Saints to never-before-seen heights. A second-year coach in Denver, he’s now trying to become the sixth coach in franchise history to make a Super Bowl and the third to win one.
For all the building and changing that goes into that, there’s only one way it happens: Winning.
In particular, finding ways to win games like this one. Denver is 3-3, it’s a short week and the Broncos can either put an ugly loss to the Chargers in the rearview mirror and get back on track or fall further into a rut with the toughest part of the schedule looming in November.
“What I told (the team) this morning is we’re in the business of collecting wins,” Payton said Tuesday. “And this is the next one we have to get. The preparation and all of it. Years later we’ll be able to look back on it, but right now it’s focused.”
Payton is legendary for his intensity on game days. “Gameday Sean,” they called it in New Orleans. A completely different person than during the week.
“For him, how do I get back into that Gameday Sean mode? How do I do that while having so many other distractions kind of going on as well?” Saints radio color commentator and former running back Deuce McAllister told The Post. “I can get to Gameday Sean once the whistle is blown and I can focus on my team, but everything else is going to be, ‘Man, this is weird. Those are my guys. I signed you. We talked. We had coffee. We went out.’
“Particularly early on, Sean was one of the guys. When we had a veteran team, Sean was one of the guys. Not a lot of those guys are still around player-wise, but with Drew getting inducted, you’ll see a lot of those players. So at some point, he’ll have to focus on trying to coach the team, but there will be all kinds of distractions going on.”
McAllister is just as interested, he said, in what the chess match looks like between Payton and New Orleans coach Dennis Allen, his former long-time defensive coordinator.
Consider the ramifications of having to keep a game plan simple on a short week. The Broncos have Nix behind center Alex Forsyth, who is making his second career start. On the other side is Saints inside linebacker Demario Davis, a wiley 35-year-old who played every game of Payton’s final four seasons in New Orleans.
“Those were the calls that Demario heard every day,” McAllister said. “I’m sure (Payton) changed some of it, but you can’t change all of it because that’s the basis of the offense. … Plus, it’s a short week so it’s basic because you just want guys to go play fast. For Bo, you want it to be simple for him but at the same time so many of those guys have gone against the offense.”
Those are the levels that go into a game like this.
There’s a noon-hour Thursday celebration for Brees, which Shanle wonders if Payton, Joe Lombardi, Pete Carmichael, Joe Vitt and Zach Strief will attend.
There’s the halftime ceremony, which Payton already knows he will miss.
“Our halftime is eight minutes and it takes me a minute to pee,” Payton said. “Then you sit with the coaches, go through the list, take the highlighter out: What are the features for the second half? Go in and talk to the team, ‘Here are the keys for the second half. Ready, break.’
“It really is fast.”
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There’s the Payton/Allen cat-and-mouse game, the matchup of rookie quarterbacks and the star players likely missing on both sides in Denver’s Pat Surtain II and New Orleans’ Chris Olave.
It’s a big to-do and a Week 7 game between a couple of middling teams.
It’s a trip down memory lane and the next one on the schedule.
It’s a celebration of past success and a matchup of teams who have tried and so far failed to replicate it.
It’s a story Payton will assuredly someday tell.
Especially if Denver wins.
“He will push it all the way in,” McAllister said, “And I don’t know if there’s one game he’ll want more than his return to New Orleans.”
Broncos ties to New Orleans
Coaches, front office
Name
Pos.
Saints
Sean Payton
Head coach
2006-21
Joe Lombardi
Offensive coordinator
2007-13, 2016-20
Pete Carmichael
Sr. offensive asst.
2006-22
Zach Strief
Offensive line
2016-17*
Declan Doyle
Tight ends
2019-22
John Morton
Passing game coordinator
2006, 2015-16
Logan Kilgore
Offennsive quality control
2014*
Joe Vitt
Sr. defensive asst.
2006-16
Michael Wilhoite
Outside linebackers
2019-20
Jim Leonhard
Secondary/Def. PGC
2013*
Beau Lowery
VP Player Health and Performance
2012-21
Dan Dalrymple
Head strength coach
2006-21
Cody Rager
VP Player Personnel
2015-23
Players
Name
Position
Saints
Adam Trautman
TE
2020-22
Michael Burton
FB
2020
Lil’Jordan Humphrey
WR
2019-21
Lucas Krull
TE
2022
Wil Lutz
K
2016-20, 2022
Malcolm Roach
DL
2020-23
Kwon Alexander^
ILB
2020-21
Calvin Throckmorton^
OL
2021-22
A.T. Perry^
WR
2023-24
* As a player | ^ Practice squad
Sean Payton offenses
New Orleans
Year
YPG
Rank
PPG
Rank
2006
391.5
1
25.8
5
2007
361.3
4
23.7
12
2008
410.7
1
28.9
1
2009
403.8
1
31.9
1
2010
372.5
6
24
11
2011
467.1
1
34.2
2
2012*
410.9
2
28.8
3
2013
399.4
4
25.9
10
2014
411.4
1
25.1
9
2015
403.8
2
25.5
8
2016
426
1
29.3
2
2017
391.2
2
28
4
2018
379.2
8
31.5
3
2019
373.9
9
28.6
3
2020
376.4
12
30.1
5
2021
304.5
28
21.4
19
Denver
Year
YPG
Rank
PPG
Rank
2023
298.4
26
21
19
2024
278.2
29
18.7
24
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