As the New Orleans Saints boarded their team buses on Jan. 4, 2014, for a road playoff game in Philadelphia, many of them got a good laugh.
Their head coach, Sean Payton, had giant bullseyes attached to the side of each of the five charters, anticipating that Eagles fans would have projectiles at the ready.
He, like the Philadelphia faithful throwing eggs, was right on the money.
“I told them, ‘When we pull off this highway here and you head down past the stadium, on the right side, Bus 1, you’re going to take six eggs,’” Payton told The Herd recently. “As sure as we’re sitting here. These little kids will be flipping you the bird. Bus 2, you’re going to take three or four and they’re going to reload, Bus 3, you’re going to get another six. You’re just preparing your team for the events of the day.”
Payton had a good reconnaissance on the City of Brotherly Love because he lived in Pennsylvania for several years growing up and then was the Eagles’ quarterbacks coach for two years in the late 1990s. But the head coach certainly wasn’t above putting his thumb on the scale in order to ensure his version of events played out. What better way to get fans to target your buses than to put actual targets on them?
“I wanted to plant people to throw eggs at our buses because you could turn and say, ‘everything is going according to plan. It’s going just how I told you it would go,’” he said.
This is hardly a one-off. In fact, those who have worked and played for the new Denver Broncos head coach said this is just part of the Payton Show.
“When he gets up in front of the room and tells you what the game plan is for that week and how you’re going to beat the opponent in front of you that week, you believe every single word,” former linebacker Scott Shanle told The Post. “And it’s crazy the way he stands in front of you and it plays out the way he says it’s going to, you’re like, ‘Man, how can this guy see the future?’ He knows what you need to do exactly and then it plays out that way.
“He just has a way of motivating guys.”
Sometimes that involves props.
“He hung mousetraps from the ceiling one time when we had a big game coming up and he said, ‘Don’t take the cheese. The media’s going to be dangling cheese in front of you, don’t take the cheese,’” Shanle said. “Or old guys, he’d put gas cans in their lockers late in the season and ask, ‘Do you have any gas left in the tank? Are you too old?’ ”
It’s part of the reason Payton impressed Broncos CEO Greg Penner and the rest of Denver’s search committee. Not specifically the bullseye or gas cans or the fact that he once protested the size of the towels given out to Saints fans because they were so small – “‘You have to dip it in water to wave the towel correctly,” Payton recalled – but rather what noticing and then taking control of that minutiae represents.
“You don’t do that without incredible passion and intensity,” Penner said in introducing Payton. “As I called around and talked to others around the league, it kept coming up. It’s the attention to detail. …
“That level of attention to detail is what makes for winning organizations. He’s going to bring that energy and passion to every part of our building.”
Payton has the reputation of being a successful play-caller and offensive mind in part because of his exacting standards for players during practice and games. But Denver will quickly learn his eyes see well beyond the edge of the practice fields at the UC Health Training Center.
“If we are maniacal with the details on the field, then we have to be that way in every other element,” Payton said at his introductory news conference. “The training room, the weight room, how we approach ticket sales. Everything matters. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s only this that’s important.’ Everything matters. How we travel. How we celebrated in the locker room. (In New Orleans), we brought a $30,000 stereo system. ‘Club Dub.’ We thought it was important, especially on the road, that everyone could hear our locker room celebrating and say, ‘What is going on in there?’
“That is creating culture. With the right people and the right details.”
Culture is a notoriously obscure concept to try to pin down. Everybody’s after good culture, but there’s no guidebook on how to create it or definition of what it looks like outside of the end goal, which is winning.
Payton, though, was comfortable making it the basis of his lone introductory news conference prognostication.
“I don’t like making predictions because I think that there’s so much that goes into it,” he said. “I think it’s realistic for our fan base to expect a completely different type of culture.”
Instilling that isn’t necessarily easy and isn’t necessarily pleasant for everybody involved.
“For those guys in that locker room going through the motions, them days are over with,” former Saints linebacker and longtime New Orleans resident Pat Swilling told The Post.
Several current Broncos have already expressed their willingness to take the heat.
As the season wrapped up, more than one said the team needed more of a disciplinarian. All-Pro cornerback Pat Surtain II played for one of the winningest coaches in football history at Alabama in Nick Saban, who is not exactly known for being warm and fuzzy.
“It’s just something that’s in their DNA – winning and having that type of mentality – and that’s what you look for in great coaches, day in and day out,” Surtain said recently. “I think (Payton is) going to provide those qualities that you look for in a coach. We’re building for next year and that’s what I’m excited about with Sean and with everybody in the organization.
“I can tell we’re going to have a great year.”
Surtain said he hadn’t yet met Payton in person. When he does, he’ll find a coach with a reputation for being both tough and also good to his players.
Former Saints quarterback Luke McCown said he credits much of his football success to the fact that he spent four years in Tampa learning under Jon Gruden, given Gruden’s intensity, offensive mind and the massive playbook he had to master.
“Jon was all football all the time and he made you feel like he was trying to get an angle on you if you weren’t thinking about football the amount of time he was,” McCown said. “You’d have a conversation with him, and you always kind of felt like, ‘Man, if I don’t make him feel like I’m thinking about football 100% of the time, I might not be here tomorrow.’ Complete opposite with Sean. He wants to know about your family. He wants to know what’s going on in your life and how’s your brother doing and what was your college experience like and here’s what’s going on with my son Connor.
“He’s just kind of an open book that way.”
McCown thinks its part of the reason New Orleans got so much out of late-round draft picks and unheralded free agents like wide receivers Marques Colston (seventh-rounder) and Lance Moore (UDFA), running back Pierre Thomas (UDFA), guard Jahri Evans (fourth-rounder) and many more.
“Sean made you feel like, ‘Hey, we brought you here for a reason. I have a specific idea. You’re not just here to be a body.’ … Those guys believe that,” McCown said. “… To me, that speaks more about leadership than, ‘How can I get No. 1, No. 2, No. 5 on my roster to maximize his potential?’ Leadership is, ‘Can I turn sixth-, seventh-rounders, free agents into not just special teams and role players, but pivotal, key parts of what we do on the team?’ I think Sean’s extremely good at that.”
That, of course, is only one more reason to figure the Broncos are in for quite a flip this offseason. Culture, roster, approach, props, you name it, it’s all changing.
Penner wasn’t just open to such a project, he set out to find a person to orchestrate it.
Now, change is here.
“A head coach means a lot, especially a coach that’s down to create that winning culture, down for the team, down to build an organization,” Surtain said. “I think Sean provides those qualities. We’re looking forward to continuing to build and getting better.
“Why not with Sean? I feel like he’s the perfect guy for the job.”
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