Sean Payton's New Orleans return: How Saints experience shapes his Broncos vision

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — When Jon Stinchcomb saw clips of Broncos quarterback Bo Nix barking at Sean Payton on the sideline after a failed drive earlier this month, he thought back to one of his own interactions with the head coach more than a decade and a half earlier.

The Saints were playing against one of their NFC South rivals, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At a critical moment in the game, Stinchcomb, the right tackle, drew a penalty that ultimately spoiled the drive. He knew what was coming next.

“I strongly considered maybe just going to the Bucs’ sideline in between series because I knew what was waiting for me as I was coming over,” Stinchcomb said. “So I think all of us (who played for Payton in New Orleans), when we saw what transpired with Bo, our antennas perked up waiting to see the response because very rarely do those kinds of transactions finish the way that one seemingly did on TV.”

Payton’s alter ego on Sundays during his 15 seasons as the head coach in New Orleans was “Game Day Sean.” It was a nod to the feisty, at times cantankerous personality he adopted in those hours on the sideline. Anybody — player, coach, official, opposing team — could feel his wrath at any moment. But in the interaction with Nix, Payton had become … the proverbial cooler head?

“That was attention-getting for anyone who has played under coach Payton,” Stinchcomb said.

Broncos HC Sean Payton and rookie QB Bo Nix had this exchange on the sideline after Denver punted in their last drive.

📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/CxGDEA023i

— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) October 6, 2024

Perhaps there is a gentler side these days to Payton, who chose the path of de-escalation in the interaction with Nix, gave the quarterback an endearing nickname (Ferris Bueller) and generally turned the episode into a scene from a sitcom. But as he prepares for his return to New Orleans in Thursday night’s game against the Saints, his overall vision hasn’t wavered — even if the path to manifesting it has.

“The excitement and the feeling you get when you do win — or the pain you feel when you lose — that is exactly the same when you’re 42 or 58,” Payton said when he took over as the Broncos coach in 2023, one year after he stepped away from the Saints and into a brief, one-year retirement. “Those things don’t vary.”

Payton in 2006 took over a Saints team with one playoff appearance in the previous 13 years and only one postseason victory in its history. It wasn’t his first choice. He took an immediate liking to Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, but as he sat in the interview for the job in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, absorbing the challenges the position would pose, Payton thought to himself, “Man, this is his problem. It’s not going to be mine.” Payton had been angling to become the Packers’ new head coach. When he returned to his hotel in New Orleans for a break in between the interview and a dinner to come, he opened a voicemail on his phone. The Packers were going in another direction.

“I remember throwing my phone into the pillow,” Payton said. “Just, like, ‘Holy cow.’”

Days later, Payton took the Saints job. By the time he left, following the 2021 season, New Orleans had won 152 games and seven division titles. It had made nine playoff appearances, one ending in the franchise’s first Super Bowl victory after the 2009 season. It was a level of success, Payton said, “none of us could have envisioned” when he and his staff took over in a city still reeling from the hurricane’s wrath.

At the start, charting a new course for Payton meant being uncompromising in his demands. He was a shock to the system.

“We recognized that there needed to be a cultural shift, specifically in that locker room but really across the organization,” Stinchcomb said. “Those type of seismic changes sometimes are very painful. … There was a dual recognition. One, winning certainly helps. But, two, there was a lot of veteran presence of established players that were either encouraged to walk out the door, were traded or cut, just because it was culture that was valued most. For those of us who remained, we were keenly aware that there was no entitlement for any of us in that locker room. Winning certainly helped, but there was also a healthy fear that this was the way things were going to be here, and you could get in line and buy in or there would be 31 other opportunities you could pursue.”

The Broncos when Payton arrived in early 2023 were different from the Saints in one significant, unmistakable way. The coach walked into a training facility that houses three Super Bowl trophies. Its fan base has decades of experience watching successful head coaches (Mike Shanahan, Dan Reeves, Gary Kubiak, Red Miller) and Hall of Fame quarterbacks (John Elway, Peyton Manning). As a franchise, there wasn’t much uncharted territory left to tread. It was part of what made the Broncos so alluring as Payton plotted his next chapter.

“It matters here,” he has said.

But like the Saints of 2006, the current Broncos hadn’t tasted winning in what felt like forever. There wasn’t a single homegrown player on the roster Payton inherited that had been to the playoffs. Painful seismic changes were coming once again. By the time the Broncos set their initial roster for the 2024 season, only 14 players who were on Denver’s active roster when the team began its 2022 campaign under Nathaniel Hackett remained. Payton cut or traded key veterans, including quarterback Russell Wilson.

“It’s a new culture,” said kicker Wil Lutz, who spent seven seasons with Payton in New Orleans before joining the Broncos in 2023. “I’m not here to say before I was here was good or bad; I don’t know. But he’s got to come in and set the tone just as a player does. The most important thing is you have to have the locker room behind you. I think he’s good at that. Do we always agree with it? We don’t have to. He’s the coach. But we respect it because we have reason behind it. He’s got proof behind it. One thing he always says is, ‘I’ve seen this book.’ And it’s, ‘OK, we’ve got to trust him because it works.’”

The Broncos began Payton’s first season 1-5. They are 10-7 since. They’ve transformed their special teams units into one of the league’s best after struggling for years. They are disciplined situationally. Since Week 7 of last season, the Broncos rank seventh in the NFL in turnover margin. For those who have been with Payton at both stops, those hallmarks feel similar.

“When you see guys start to buy in, that’s when it can get fun,” Lutz said. “You’re winning for each other, which is important. You could definitely see it throughout training camp this year, like, ‘OK, this is working. And that’s huge.’”

But halftime of Thursday night’s game at the Caesars Superdome will provide a reminder that culture is only part of the equation. In the NFL, few things are more important than the quarterback. Drew Brees’ induction into the Saints Hall of Fame will be a recognition for all he did while helping New Orleans become a perennial power. Signing Brees during free agency in 2006, weeks after Payton took the job, jump-started everything for him. Finding the right landing spot after a shoulder injury that put his career in doubt altered everything for Brees.

On Thursday, they will be linked again.

“Forever, Drew and Sean will be tied together, and rightfully so,” Stinchcomb said. “The partnership and the synergy that was created, it was special and historic. The amount of offensive prowess they were able to generate in a time where Drew was trying to breathe life into his career post-shoulder explosion. Coach Payton is looking for this opportunity, and his offensive brilliance, married with a player operated like a supercomputer on the field, it was really perfect. You’re able to do some special things when you get those kinds of relationships.”

The truth is, Payton will likely never have another pairing with a quarterback as he did with Brees, whose induction to the team Hall of Fame, the coach said, “is the first of many” honors to come. A gold jacket and a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame are a couple of years away. Nix is only six games into his NFL career, far too early to make any declarations about where his career will take him. Perhaps his marriage with Payton will one day produce consistently strong results, but for now, the partnership is in its early days, the future unclear.

As the Broncos fell behind the Chargers, 23-0, last week, Payton found a lighthearted moment to approach his quarterback.

“This NFL thing, it’s not like college,” Payton told Nix. “We don’t have Such and Such University on our schedule. Each week you can catch yourself right away.”

There will be reminders everywhere Thursday of the unprecedented heights Payton and Brees reached in New Orleans. There will be emotions for the coach who raised his family in the city, created lifelong memories. How could there not be? In the stands, there will be emotions, too. Payton doesn’t expect “flowers and warm fuzzies” from those in attendance.

Stinchcomb thinks he’s wrong.

“Ultimately,” he said, “it’s appreciation. Even for the most passionate fan who might even be vocal in a critical way, it’s still very appreciative of what he did for the organization. It was forever-changing and a very positive thing. You don’t win a Super Bowl without him. That’s evident. I think the trajectory of the entire organization changed because of coach Payton. I think, at its core, there is a deep appreciation for what he did.”

When the game starts, though, Payton is the adversary, the guy emerging from the visiting locker room for the first time. A guy “in the business of winning,” as he said this week, simply looking for another win.