Shock rippled through Roy Banks as the oblong ball wobbled on the ground toward infamy.
The Who had cleared the Hard Rock Stadium turf in Miami moments before, and the football world settled in for the second half of Super Bowl XLIV. The New Orleans Saints, trailing 10-6 and kicking off to Indianapolis, needed a defensive stop.
Then, suddenly, they didn’t.
In perhaps the most audacious call of his career, New Orleans coach Sean Payton dialed up a surprise onside kick. The Saints recovered.
Five Drew Brees completions and 58 yards later, they took their first lead of the night. By the end of that February 2010 evening, they hoisted the Lombardi Trophy.
The decision stunned Banks, a star wide receiver at Eastern Illinois in the mid-1980s, but not for the same reason as so many others watching around the world.
In fact, the opposite.
He’d seen this before. From Payton.
The way Banks recalls it, Payton in September 1986 convinced Eastern Illinois coach Al Molde to surprise Southern Illinois with an onside kick to start the game. They got it and rolled to a lopsided victory.
Payton wasn’t the special teams coordinator or the offensive play-caller, though. He was the quarterback, a senior who threw for 400 yards that day, 3,000-plus for the season and more than 10,000 in his college career.
More than two decades later, he played the same aggressive card under the sport’s brightest light.
“I said, ‘This fool, he really did it. He really called that play,’” Banks told The Post. “He had a feeling for it because it was unexpected. I saw it at EIU and it was the same thing. But you’re on the biggest stage. You’re going to call an onside kick in the Super Bowl?
“He’s got no fear, though. The guy has no fear.”
It might be going too far to say Payton consciously revisited that moment when he made the Super Bowl-swinging decision. The confidence and mindset, though?
There’s a direct line to be drawn across 23 years connecting one onside to the next. A line that now extends 14 more years to the present. It follows the path of a guy with confidence always worn supremely — often loudly — on his sleeve. Depending on the day, it might come across as arrogance or a motivational tactic. Dictatorial or democratic. Calculating or free-wheeling. Charming or chafed. But it is all rooted in experiences as early as high school that had Sean Payton pointed, whether he knew it or not, toward coaching.
Now Denver is his second head-coaching job — a second act for a Super Bowl-winning coach with a resume that was already worthy of Hall of Fame consideration.
The to-do list remains a mile long and the expectations a Mile High. Why do it? Why ditch the cushy television gig and Southern California digs and come to the Front Range to take on such a building project?
“Have you ever done something that, you’re so excited after you’ve done it once and you can’t wait to show somebody?” he asked rhetorically earlier this summer. “… That’s kind of like winning a championship. You’re addicted to it. There is just nothing like it. It’s borderline obsessive.”
“He had that swagger”
The Broncos have already seen Payton’s bravado on display.
At the outset of camp, he told USA Today that Nathaniel Hackett’s 2022 season here “might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL. That’s how bad it was.”
While those words melted the internet, Dick Dullaghan was describing Payton to The Post as “gregarious,” “outspoken,” “fiery,” and someone who “has tremendous confidence in himself.” Dullaghan wasn’t reading Twitter, though. He was describing what Payton was like as a high school junior at his Indiana summer football camp more than 40 years ago.
Dullaghan, a longtime high school coach in Indiana, was a rival and eventually close friend and business partner with Payton’s high school coach, JR Bishop.
When Payton first started attending the Bishop-Dullaghan football camps, he had never even started a game at Naperville High in the Chicago suburbs. Yet he brimmed with outward self-assurance.
“The 7-on-7 games, you talk about a guy that wanted to win, oh my God,” Dullaghan said. “He was just always that way.”
But Payton was also always learning, especially from Bishop, who died last summer but whom Payton considers among his foremost mentors.
“My high school coach always thought when I was done playing, ‘You’re going to be a coach,’” Payton told The Post. “I heard that a number of times. You don’t want to hear that because you just want to play. But when I finished (at EIU) I had a tryout with the Chiefs, was in arena football, up in the CFL and then back down (to the Chicago Bears) during the strike season.
“Pretty soon it was, OK, my mom’s wondering, ‘All your friends are getting married, you don’t have any health insurance, what’s the deal?’ So I got into coaching in 1988.”
He coached Marshall Faulk at San Diego State. He got his first chance to call plays at Miami (Ohio) in 1994. It hardly mattered that he’d never done it before — at least as a coach. He ran with the opportunity.
“He had that swagger at that time, like, ‘OK, shoot, we’re going to figure this out and we’re going to have fun doing it,’” said Deland McCullough, a running back there who now coaches the position at Notre Dame. “He was strong.”
The NFL break
After two years at Miami, Payton spent 1996 on the staff at Illinois as the quarterbacks coach. He jumped from there to the same title with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1997.
How did that happen?
“Wherever you’re working, you’re constantly making an impression,” he said. “The equipment manager and the training room assistant knew Bill Callahan at the Eagles. They were looking for a quarterback coach and the reason I got that job is because two people that really weren’t necessarily coaches said (to Callahan), ‘This is a guy you’ve got to look at.’”
No surprise, he wasted no time asserting his opinions once he got there.
Only a couple of months into Payton’s first-ever NFL job, the Eagles had McCullough in for a tryout on his recommendation.
“I was coming off a pretty major knee surgery and I remember when I went to work out, I crushed that workout,” McCullough said. “And Coach Payton, right at the end of it said to the other coaches, ‘I told you guys he was the (expletive). I told you.’”
Payton might have been right, but McCullough’s knee injury kept him from ever making a real go of it as an NFL player.
Payton, though, was just getting started.
“Sometimes you’re blessed with good bloodlines,” Payton said. “I was blessed to work with Jon Gruden in Philly and learn offensive football. Then New York was the first time I got to coordinate and call plays and we went to the Super Bowl.
“Then law school for me was with (Bill) Parcells in Dallas. That was a higher education, a much broader education of being a head coach.”
Professor Parcells
Indeed, much of how Payton operates even today as a head coach is in the Parcells mold.
He engages in player psychology like Parcells.
“They’re the two best coaches I’ve ever been around — and Sean’s a little better at this than Bill, I think — of having a pulse of the team and knowing how to motivate,” said former linebacker Scott Shanle, who played for each between the Cowboys and Saints. “Knowing when a team is too high after a big win and how you have to treat them. Knowing when a team is low after a devastating loss and how he has to react.”
He conducts practice like Parcells.
“Structurally, I noticed right away how we practiced and how hard we practiced and the intensity that was required at his practice was Bill to a ‘T,’” Shanle said.
He talks like Parcells.
“If you watch Bill’s press conferences and then listen to Sean talk, you can see a lot of similarities, whether he’s describing a player or what he expects,” Shanle said. “How many times have I heard, ‘Dumb players do dumb things; smart players rarely do dumb things.’ He’ll have that up in the locker room.
“A lot of those sayings he hung up around the building I heard in Dallas with Bill.”
He still talks with Parcells, too.
“He’s focused on the horses right now, and good for him,” Payton said recently. “He’s had some recent winners, so he’s always in a good mood when I call him.”
“I’ve got this DC’s number”
Payton, of course, developed his own style as a head coach over the years in New Orleans.
His game-week preparations are the stuff of legend. When the Broncos arrive back at the Centura Health Training Center on Wednesdays after their day off during the regular season, they can expect a detailed opponent breakdown at the start of the team meeting.
Then the plan unfolds over the next three days.
“All week long, you’re hearing different ways and versions — Wednesday it’s first and second down install, what he’s thinking,” longtime Saints safety Roman Harper said. “Thursday, it’s how we’ve got to be efficient on third down and where our game plan is going to be. Friday: Red zone and two-minute. All these situations are what’s going to give us an edge to win this particular game in this particular way and how it’s going to play out.
“I couldn’t tell you how many times he’s been right about so many of these things.”
Parity in the NFL means more weeks than not are going to be decided by one score. A year ago, 13 of Denver’s 17 games featured a margin of eight points or fewer. Games are decided by razor-thin differences. One of Payton’s specialties is figuring out what they’re going to be.
“Whether it’s, ‘Hey, this week, a punt is not a bad thing, offense. No turnovers,’” Harper said. “’Defensively, they’re going to get yards but we’ve got to hold them to field goals in the red zone. We’ve got to get a timely turnover here. We’ve got to be better on special teams this week because it’s an advantage right here.’”
Or, Harper added, “’Don’t even worry about it, defense, I just need you to hold them under 35. I’ve got this DC’s number. I got it. Don’t even worry about it.’ And he’s right. I’ve seen that, too.”
“Man, he’s OCD”
That level of detail doesn’t end with game plans. It extends to, well, everything.
A reporter couldn’t get the question out to Shanle before he started a knowing laugh.
“I laugh because we’d laugh at Sean’s quirks,” he said. “Man, he’s OCD. He’d get stuck on something and that’s just how it would be. It could be the temperature of the locker room. He’d be on the equipment managers about, ‘It has to be 67 degrees. I don’t want it 69. I don’t want it 66.’
“When he got something in his head that he truly believed — he believed we won more games when we wore black pants, and that’s just how it was. He felt like we played better. Or, it’d be, ‘What bus company did we use for the away game on the West Coast?’”
Broncos players and coaches have gotten a sense of that over the course of the offseason program and training camp. He had notes written down after their first August day on the field that weren’t so much about effort but where and exactly how coaches had drill stations set up. About why certain support staffers were standing where and how he’d like to see it different. He’s had input in almost every decision regarding the football side of the organization, from apparel to media relations strategy to the lunch room schedule to travel itineraries to the length of the grass on the practice fields.
“He’s very firm on his attention to detail,” wide receiver Courtland Sutton said. “Whether it’s pre-snap penalties, whether it’s guys standing back while we’re running plays (at practice), everything for him is very intentional.
“There’s a rhyme and a reason to everything he’s doing.”
A fast start?
Molde has a theory about confidence.
Payton’s full of it, a battery that at this point will never run out of juice thanks to so many years and so many wins. But you can’t always sit around and wait for the charge. Sometimes you’ve got to generate the spark yourself.
You want a high school kid to believe he can play? You want a young coach to believe he can hang long enough to become an experienced coach? You want a quarterback in rhythm?
Pave a road that allows for some good. It will help smooth out the unavoidable rough patches.
“I think when he says ‘Confidence is born of demonstrated ability,’ that’s a pretty true statement, but I’d also add that confidence is built on success,” Molde said. “Every game is another opportunity for success, and it’s important that you get started well to build on that confidence. Complete a few passes. Make a few first downs. That’s critical to building success in each game as you go along.
“Every game’s kind of a challenge, and you’ve got to figure out ways to do that.”
Payton did that as a player. He did it again when he got to New Orleans. He wondered during a rough 2006 preseason if his team would win any games at all. But then they started the regular season 5-1 and took the NFL by surprise.
By the time New Orleans hit the bye week, it was easy to buy what the first-year coach was selling.
“You start off hot and you just keep rolling,” Harper said. “Wins early will pay off for you later on down the road. It’s like stacking money in the bank and you continue to compound interest off those wins later on in the season and you win games that you probably weren’t supposed to.”
Can Payton engender the same kind of fast start for the Broncos this fall? Can he instill confidence in a team that hasn’t demonstrated success? A franchise that’s suffered seven straight years without a playoff berth and six straight losing seasons?
Those who know him won’t be surprised if he does.
“I played for two head coaches in the NFL,” Harper said. “And, I’ll be honest with you, under Sean Payton, I never felt like we were the underdog to anybody. Ever.”
Sean Payton’s statistical ledger
The stats from Payton’s time as a head coach/play-caller with New Orleans are inarguable: From the time he took over in 2006 to when he stepped down after the 2021 season, the Saints were among the best offenses in the NFL. Here’s a look at the numbers:
| 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 | 24.0 | 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 | 426.0 | 1 | 29.3 | 2 |
| 2017 | 391.2 | 2 | 28.0 | 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 |
* Suspended 2012
Saints and Broncos offensive comparison
In stacking up Sean Payton’s Saints offense to the Broncos over his time in New Orleans in terms of offensive DVOA — a Football Outsiders cumulative stat that compares a team’s offense to the league average — the Denver head coach’s track record indicates his new team may be in for an upgrade.
| Year | NO ODVOA | NFL Rank | Den. ODVOA | NFL Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 10.1% | 8 | -4.80% | 19 |
| 2007 | 6.7% | 11 | 9.10% | 8 |
| 2008 | 16.5% | 4 | 18.90% | 3 |
| 2009 | 24.7% | 2 | 1.10% | 18 |
| 2010 | 6.3% | 11 | 1.50% | 17 |
| 2011 | 33.5% | 2 | -10.30% | 23 |
| 2012* | 12.0% | 9 | 22.70% | 2 |
| 2013 | 16.3% | 5 | 34.20% | 1 |
| 2014 | 10.1% | 8 | 20.30% | 3 |
| 2015 | 9.8% | 8 | -8.50% | 24 |
| 2016 | 15.2% | 6 | -12.00% | 28 |
| 2017 | 22.4% | 2 | -18.70% | 31 |
| 2018 | 16.1% | 4 | 0.80% | 15 |
| 2019 | 22.0% | 4 | -11.30% | 26 |
| 2020 | 10.7% | 7 | -20% | 30 |
| 2021 | -7.0% | 22 | 5.50% | 12 |
| Avg. NFL rank | 7.1 | 16.3 | ||
| Avg. since ’16 | 7.5 | 23.7 |
* Suspended 2012
The Sean Payton File
Following his record-breaking career at Eastern Illinois, and a brief pro career that included a stint as quarterback of the “Spare Bears” during the 1987 NFL players strike, Payton’s rise through the coaching ranks was swift. Here’s a look at each of his stops en route to Denver:
| Year | Team | Coaching role | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990-91 | Indiana State | RB/WR | First full-time coaching job |
| 1992-93 | San Diego State | RB | Coached Marshall Faulk |
| 1994-95 | Miami (Ohio) | OC | First play-calling duty |
| 1996 | Illinois | QB | Last college job |
| 1997-98 | Philadelphia | QB | Learned from Jon Gruden |
| 1999 | N.Y. Giants | QB | Took over play-calling midyear |
| 2000-02 | N.Y. Giants | OC | First NFL coordinator job |
| 2003-05 | Dallas | AHC/QB | “Law school” with Bill Parcells |
| 2006-21* | New Orleans | HC | First head coaching job |
| 2023 | Denver | HC | Act Two |
* Suspended 2012
Regular-season wins leaders among active coaches
Sean Payton has a long way to go to catch up to Bill Belichick, but he’s one of just seven active NFL head coaches with more than 100 career wins. Here’s how he stacks up among the top 10:
| Coach | Teams | Regular season record | Postseason record | Super Bowl titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Belichick | Cleveland/New England* | 298-152 | 31-13 | 6 |
| Andy Reid | Philadelphia/Kansas City* | 247-138-1 | 22-16 | 2 |
| Mike Tomlin | Pittsburgh | 163-93-2 | 8-9 | 1 |
| Pete Carroll | N.Y. Jets/New England/Seattle* | 161-112-1 | 11-11 | 1 |
| Mike McCarthy | Green Bay/Dallas* | 155-97-2 | 11-10 | 1 |
| Sean Payton | New Orleans | 152-89 | 9-8 | 1 |
| John Harbaugh | Baltimore | 147-95 | 11-9 | 1 |
| Ron Rivera | Carolina/Washington* | 98-90-2 | 3-5 | 0 |
| Sean McDermott | Buffalo | 62-35 | 4-5 | 0 |
| Sean McVay | L.A. Rams | 60-38 | 7-3 | 1 |
* Last team listed is current team.
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