Payton and Brees

by Jeff Duncan

  “[General manager] Mickey [Loomis] said if Sean runs down to the end zone one more time, C.J., you know him the best, you’ve got to go get him,” Johnson said. “Lo and behold, Reggie Bush makes a long run and the refs call it back and there goes Sean on the field. We’re in Chicago, it’s minus-75 degrees, I’m trying to pull Sean back and getting my butt chewed, ‘You get away from me! Don’t you touch me!’

  “With Sean you know what you’re getting. As coaches, I think we’ve all been fired a couple of times in our minds, and that was one of mine. It goes with the territory.”

  Lombardi has felt the wrath, as well. As the replay liaison for Payton on game days, he has the unenviable task of advising the head coach on review challenges with the officials. Payton isn’t the most patient soul while awaiting word from Lombardi, who is positioned in the coaches’ box high above the playing field. Lombardi has learned to err on the side of caution in most situations.

  “I always say, ‘Sean is the greatest coach to work for—for 349 days a year,” Lombardi quipped.

  As wired as Payton is during games, he unwinds pretty quickly afterward and returns to his normal self shortly after the game ends. By the time he addresses the team in the locker room and meets the media for his post-game press conference, he’s usually calmed down. If he’s lashed into someone particularly hard during a game, he often will seek them out and smooth things over.

  “He’s so good after the game,” Taysom Hill said. “I think everybody that knows him well enough knows to not take any of his stuff personally. He just gets into the moment. He’s just a fiery, competitive guy.”

  Payton’s sideline antics have made him Public Enemy No. 1 for opposing fans. He’s regularly heckled on the road, a tactic he embraces. At the Saints game at CenturyLink Field in 2019, fans brandished signs mocking his role in Bountygate or time as a replacement player during the 1987 labor strike. When Payton jogged off the field after the Saints’ 33–27 win that day, he mockingly applauded the group above the exit tunnel to the locker room and exchanged taunts with them as he left the field.

  But in New Orleans, a city that celebrates passion and eccentricity, Payton’s fiery game-day persona is beloved. He’s become a cult hero, especially among the team’s diehard fans, who, after years of suffering ignominious defeats and having proverbial sand kicked in their faces by the 49ers and Falcons, view Payton as their bully savior. Images of his pursed-lipped, icy-eyed glare are popular on T-shirts and Internet avatars across the Crescent City.

  Payton, meanwhile, makes no apologies for his behavior. Football is an emotional game, and he wants his players to have an edge on game days. His sideline intensity has set the tone for the Saints throughout his tenure.

  “Every one of us has been in a basketball game where you’re on a court and the winners stay and if you lose, you’re done and it’s four deep on who’s waiting,” Payton said. “There’s a good chance if you lose that, unless you want to stick around for an hour and a half, you’re not going to play anymore. And it’s 10–9 and you’re going to 11 and you think about at that moment how you compete because you don’t want to be that guy that gives up the shot [that loses the game]. That last bucket in that pickup game, you had to earn that last bucket. When you get guys caring like that, then you’ve got something there.”

  Dome-ination:

  2015 New York Giants

  November 1, 2015, marked the 49th anniversary of the founding of the New Orleans Saints, and Brees christened All Saints Day with one of the most memorable performances of his career.

  Against most teams and most quarterbacks, Eli Manning’s six-touchdown, 350-yard passing day would have been more than enough for victory. It was a career day, one of the best of his storied tenure in New York. In the long, proud history of New York Giants football, only Y.A. Tittle had thrown for as many touchdowns in a single game. And still it wasn’t enough. Because Brees was better.

  Brees outdueled Manning and became only the third quarterback in the modern era of the NFL to pass for seven touchdowns as the Saints outlasted the Giants 52–49 in one of the wildest shootouts in NFL history.

  How wild?

  The teams combined for 101 points, 1,030 yards, and an NFL-record 14 touchdowns. And on the final snap of the back-and-forth shootout, Kai Forbath’s 50-yard goal was the game winner. It was the third-highest- scoring game in NFL history.

  The Saints gained 608 yards, the most ever allowed by the Giants in modern NFL history.

  Brees (seven) and Manning (six) combined to throw 13 touchdown passes, the most in a single game in NFL history.

  For the Saints, it was the second-most points and third-most yards they’d amassed in club history. And they needed every one of them to secure the win.

  The Saints had six touchdown drives of 80 or more yards and scored 10 points in the final 41 seconds.

  “I’ve never been a part of something like that,” said Brees, who completed a team-record 40 of 50 passes for a career-high and Saints-record 511 yards.

  The Saints and Giants combined to average 7.3 yards per play. Of the 141 combined offensive snaps, only seven resulted in lost yardage. Thirty-six of the combined plays gained at least 10 yards. Eight of the touchdowns covered 20 or more yards. There were five scores in the fourth quarter alone.

  The penultimate play of the game featured a 24-yard punt return by Marcus Murphy; a fumble, which the Saints recovered; and a 15-yard face-mask penalty on Giants punter Brad Wing, which set up the Saints at the Giants 32-yard line for Forbath’s game-winning kick.

  “This was certainly one of the craziest games that I have ever been a part of,” Brees said. “It was punch for punch. We knew we couldn’t slip up. There were a lot of things about today that were kind of mind-boggling.”

  Brees completed passes to nine different receivers and hit five different players for touchdowns. Late in the fourth quarter, Brees had completed 18 consecutive passes and had as many touchdown passes (six) as incompletions (six). It marked the 10th five-plus-touchdown game of his career, a new NFL high.

  For the Giants, it was just the latest nightmarish experience in the Superdome. The Brees-led Saints routed them 48–27 and 49–24 on their previous two visits to New Orleans in 2009 and 2011, respectively.

  “I’ve played here before and when Drew plays like Drew plays at home, he’s almost unstoppable,” said Giants linebacker Jonathan Casillas, who won a Super Bowl ring with the Saints in 2009.

  21. Don’t Eat the Cheese

  The NFL regular season covers five long months. It begins in the humid heat of September and ends in the frigid frost of January. Along the way minds can wander, focus can falter, motivation can wane. Coaches like Sean Payton know complacency can be enemy of focus and execution.

  During the season, motivation is a weekly challenge for Payton. In addition to compiling a game plan for the upcoming opponent, he spends time each week preparing a mission statement to mold the minds of his players and hone their focus. He delivers it in a PowerPoint presentation at the team meeting on Wednesday morning to set the tone for the week ahead. The message typically highlights a few simple statistical metrics Payton believes are keys to success in the upcoming game. An opponent’s record in games after the bye week. Or their success in home games on Monday Night Football.

  But strategic plans often aren’t enough. Players sometimes need a little extra motivation to get ready for an upcoming game. And few coaches in the NFL are better motivators than Payton.

  Payton learned most of his tactics from Bill Parcells, a master motivator who knew exactly which buttons to push and when to push them for each of his players. Payton has employed a similar M.O. over the years, and many of his ploys have become legendary among his players and coaches.

  One of the most famous tactics came during the week of the 2019 NFC divisional playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles. When the team reconvened a
fter the bye week that Monday morning, Payton wanted to make a statement to the players. He enlisted his assistant, Kevin Petry, and do-it-all executive, Jay Romig, to carry out his plan. The idea was to seize the players’ attention and motivate them for the playoff run. To pull it off, he asked Romig to order $201,000 in cash from a local bank. The booty represented the bonus money at stake for each player if they won the Super Bowl.

  The cash arrived in a Brinks truck, and Romig housed it in the cylindrical glass case used to display the Lombardi Trophy in the lobby of the club’s Metairie offices. Not only was the case big enough to corral the 210 bricks of 1,000 $1 bills, but it also would provide the proper showcase for unveiling.

  At the start of the team meeting, Payton began the session in usual fashion by addressing the team with his points of emphasis for the Eagles game. At the end of his speech, he gave the cue for Romig and Petry to enter the room from a side door, where they wheeled in the covered case on a cart. For effect, two armed guards accompanied the pair.

  Then Payton read off the playoff bonus amounts for each round of the postseason: $29,000 for winning the divisional round, $54,000 for winning the NFC championship, and another $118,000 for winning the Super Bowl.

  Payton then signaled for Romig to remove the cover of the display, and the players saw the glass case full of cash, along with the Lombardi Trophy. He then told his players if they wanted it, go win three more games. The room erupted. Players excitedly swarmed the display for selfies.

  “It’s just Sean trying to give everybody a vision, especially the young guys, obviously as to what we’re after and the opportunity that we have, especially as the [No.] 1 seed,” Brees said.

  Payton’s ploy was a reprise of a stunt he pulled during the Saints’ Super Bowl run in 2009. But the bonus money has doubled in the decade since. And because Brees and punter Thomas Morstead were the only players on the roster left from the Super Bowl team, the scheme hit home.

  “It was surreal because I’ve never seen that much money in person, so when he brought that out…I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is for real? This is what we’re playing for?’” rookie defensive tackle Taylor Stallworth said.

  In previous years, Payton littered the locker room and meeting rooms with mouse traps to warn players not to “eat the cheese” during a winning streak, a Parcellsian ploy to ward off complacency and overconfidence. Translation: don’t get too full of the good things people are saying about you.

  Another time, he left empty gas cans in players’ lockers to remind them to keep fuel in the tank for the long season. He also brought baseball bats to the facility before a game to encourage players “to bring the wood” on Sunday.

  At other times, he dropped leaflets with motivational messages into players’ lockers. One year it was a photo of the Superdome beneath shots of Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme and coach John Fox and a message: Whose house is it: theirs or ours? The reference was to Carolina’s then six-game winning streak against the Saints in the Superdome at that time. (The Saints snapped it with a 30–20 victory.)

  Another year it was a motivational cartoon depicting two men in dress shirts and ties carrying pickaxes in separate tunnels. The one on the bottom was slouched over with a glum expression on his face, holding his pickax over his right shoulder, and walking away from a thin barrier of mud separating him from a trove of diamonds. The man at the top was wielding his pickax over his head and digging frantically toward the diamonds, which he’d reach as long as he kept moving in that direction. The message: don’t give up.

  “It’s one of Sean’s great strengths,” Brees said. “How do you find a way—and it’s one of the biggest challenges in the NFL—to make sure your team is ready to play 16 weeks? It’s a long season. It’s a marathon. How do you make it to where your team is always concentrated and never having a mental lapse? And you have to continue to find a chip to put on your shoulder, a motivational tactic of some kind that will get guys to play each week.”

  Payton will also push individual players’ buttons if he feels they need a motivational kick. One year he gigged Jon Stinchcomb about his pre-snap penalties. He would regularly prod Jammal Brown and Larry Warford about their weight. Scott Shanle recalled Payton getting on him about his ability—or lack thereof—to cover the tight end.

  “He’s always finding ways to give us an edge,” Shanle said.

  The motivational ploys are one of Payton’s ways to “tend the garden.” He knows it’s human nature for players to let up or look ahead during a long season. So he relentlessly lives in the precious present. He works the locker room, the meeting rooms, the cafeteria, giving everybody something to think about.

  “If it were every week it might come across as gimmicky,” Stinchcomb said. “But he knows when to pick his spots.”

  In recent years, Payton has employed various visual aids to liven up team meetings. He would recruit mascots from Saints players’ respective colleges to make appearances at the meeting. Alabama’s Big Al elephant mascot (Mark Ingram), LSU’s Mike the Tiger (Will Clapp, Travin Dural), and Michigan State’s Sparty (a gig at Brees after Michigan State beat Purdue) were all flown to New Orleans and put up in hotel rooms.

  When Georgia State upset Tennessee 38–30 in Week 1 of the 2019 season, Payton had the school’s Panther mascot outfit flown to New Orleans, and assistant equipment manager Blake Romig donned the outfit and handled the appearance duties.

  “Sean always has something up his sleeve to get you excited and motivated and focused and locked in,” Ingram said.

  The travel and hotel expenses for flying a mascot and his assistant to New Orleans and putting them up for a night at a local hotel would often cost thousands of dollars. What’s more, it required staff members to arrange the trips and escort the visitors to and from the airport, etc.—all for a five-minute appearance at the team meeting.

  “It helps lighten the mood for the team during the season,” kicker Wil Lutz said. “It also shows shows how committed the team is to winning, that they would make that kind of investment for something like that.”

  After the Saints defeated the Seattle Seahawks in Week 3 of the 2019 season, Payton had another surprise up his sleeve. After presenting the game balls to Teddy Bridgewater and other recipients, he cut the lights in the squad room and the video staff played a 40-second historical video of Pike Place Market in Seattle. When the video ended, Romig wheeled in a cart with a cooler filled with four large gutted salmon and a dozen of bags of salmon filets on the bottom. Payton then began calling out players by name and tossing the slimy fish across the squad room. Anyone with even the remotest ties to the Pacific Northwest got a fish: Taysom Hill, a Pocatello, Idaho, native; Loomis, an Oregon native; reserve quarterback J.T. Barrett, who spent time on the Seahawks practice squad for two weeks earlier in the season. As Payton hurled the slimy fish around the room, mayhem ensued as players and coaches scurried out of the line of fire.

  “That was crazy,” said Joe Lombardi, who was born and raised in Seattle. “I ducked out of the way of mine, but I had blood and slime on my game plan that entire week.”

  The shrapnel of scales and slime on the floor was so bad the club had to have the squad room sanitized by professional cleaners that night.

  “The meeting room stunk like fish for the rest of the week,” said Payton, with a mischievous grin.

  The extent Payton undergoes to pull off the stunts is just another example of his attention to detail. Early in his tenure, Payton would use speeches and guest speakers to enliven team meetings. But his approach has evolved with the times. In recent years, he’s used audiovisual aids and props to connect with his players, most of whom are of the Millennial generation.

  ”He’s always looking for that little nudge to get some extra energy into the team,” Lombardi said. “It’s a long season. It’s a grind. He’s looking for ways to wake guys up and get the team mentally on the same page and get t
hem ready to play this game. You can’t get up the same way for all 16 games. There are going to be some special teams throughout the the year that you can really crank the team up. That’s one of his secrets. He knows how to get the team cranked up.”

  After wins in the 2018 seasons, Payton installed temporary light and sound systems in the locker room, effectively transforming the post-game into a disco. Fred McAfee, the team’s director of player engagement, served as the DJ. Payton took it to another level in 2019 by ordering the purchase of a smoke machine and bigger speakers. And when the Saints win, Payton isn’t shy about joining the post-game dance-offs with the players.

  “Guys love coming to work, and we know how to have fun,” Brees said. “We had lights and smoke and everything else in the locker room after the game, having a great time, and turning it into Studio 54 or something. We know how to have fun, but the level of work matches the level of fun. The culture we have created here is special.”

  Added Strief: “Do I think it’s the reason the Saints beat teams on Sunday, absolutely not. But it’s just his way of planting a seed in your head and keeping you focused.”

  Brees also believes in the power of motivation. His methods differ from Payton’s, but they are equally effective. Whether it’s buying motivational books or distributing T-shirts with motivational messages like Smell Greatness or Be Special, Brees tries to have something new for his teammates every year when training camp begins.

  “It’s a visual way to convey the message and importance of finishing everything that you do,” tackle Zach Strief said. “It’s easy to tell somebody to do one more rep [in the weight room] or watch five more minutes of video. It’s a lot harder to visualize what the effect of that will be.”