Sean Payton leaves the Saints much better than he found them as he enters uncertain future

METAIRIE – Sean Payton sat alone at a table in front of a single microphone inside the New Orleans Saints practice facility Tuesday afternoon.

The leader of the Saints football operation for the last 16 years spoke for 30 minutes and answered reporters’ questions for another 60 minutes, addressing why he was stepping away and reflecting on the most successful era in Saints history.

Payton, who won 63.1 percent of his regular-season games, guided seven division champions, two other playoffs teams and one Super Bowl champion, built one of the strongest programs in the NFL with his eye for talent as well as his ability to blend that talent into a team greater than the sum of its parts.

When talking about a new draft choice or a key acquisition through free agency or a trade, Payton would routinely speak of having a “clear vision” for that player’s role on the team.

But Payton’s vision for his future wasn’t so clear to those in the audience and others following on television, the radio and the Internet.

The guy who started the second half of the Saints’ appearance in Super Bowl XLIV with a daring and successful onside kick that turned the game in New Orleans’ favor, explained his decision by saying “trust your gut.”

“It’s time,” Payton said. “I don’t know what’s next. My plan is to not coach in 2022. We coach, we coach and we coach until they tell us it’s time to leave.”

But Payton chose to leave long before anyone would have told him to leave.

In fact Payton said Owner Gayle Benson, President Dennis Laucha and General Manager Mickey Loomis – who watched from the audience along with Payton’s staff and much of the franchise’s front office – all tried to talk him out of leaving last week when he told them he was considering it.

The second-longest tenured coach in the NFL took Benson’s advice to “take some time away.”

But the time away didn’t deter Payton from doing something that first entered his mind at the start of training camp last July when he thought to himself “this might be it.”

At that time Payton decided to let the 2021 season play out before deciding what he would do in 2022.

Though the Saints saw their streak of four straight NFC South titles end and missed the playoffs on the final day of the regular season after finishing 9-8, Payton said his staff did an “extraordinary job.”

The franchise’s first season after the retirement of Drew Brees featured a month-long displacement to the Dallas-Fort Worth Area because of Hurricane Ida at the start of the season, the absence of an inordinate number of key players due to long-term injuries and periodic short-term absences of coaches, including Payton himself, due to COVID.

All things considered it was one of the most challenging and satisfying seasons for Payton – and arguably as a good a coaching job as he has done in 15 seasons. (The NFL suspended him for the 2012 season because of his role in the “bountygate” scandal.)

Payton said “there wasn’t a (single) moment” that convinced him it was time to step away.

Whispers that he wasn’t 100 percent committed to returning, even with three years remaining on a contract that pays him $9 million annually, began when Payton and his wife went on vacation for more than a week after the season ended January 9.

It was an unusual move for Payton, who traditionally dives into offseason preparation immediately after a season ends.

Speculation about Payton’s plans increased over the weekend with a report that he might be in line for a high-profile network announcing job.

Payton said he has not been offered any job, but clearly the prospect is attractive to him.

“I’d like to try TV,” said Payton, who added that he discussed Brees’ new job with NBC Sports during a lengthy telephone conversation Monday night. “I think I’d be pretty good at it. Hopefully that opportunity comes.”

Payton acknowledged that the long hours that he put in and his obsessive “attention to detail” can be “exhausting.”

But, he added, “We’re not writing an obituary today. It’s just another direction.”

At 58, Payton is young enough to do plenty more coaching if he chooses to do that in 2023 or beyond.

“It’s what I do,” Payton said of coaching, “but it’s not who I am.”

Payton said his parents “talked all the time about leaving a place better than when you got there.”

“I think we’ve done that,” he added in reference to an organization that had two division titles, five playoff appearances and one playoff victory before his arrival.

Payton was asked about the evolution of the organization’s facilities and he listed changes that have been made annually to upgrade what the players find when they return to start preparing for another season.

Then he pondered the decorations in the indoor facility that recognize all of the Saints’ post-season appearances and accomplishments.

“The banners have changed,” Payton said. “There are a lot more of them.”