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Sean Payton: Coaching the Denver Broncos | E129 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Randall Kaplan: Top Three quarterbacks average $52 million a year. Head coaches average$6.6 million a year. You were offered reportedly $100 million by the Manhattan dolphins for four years. Didn't take it.
• 0:10
  Randall Kaplan: You're rumored to be the highest or second highest paid coach in the league. Who's more important to winning quarterbacks or coaches?
• 0:17
  Sean Payton: Well, look, let's follow the money, but certainly the quarterback position touches the ball 70 times, 75 times a game. And I always like to say, we all get on that plane and go right, and the starting quarterback goes up those steps and he goes left.
• 0:39
  Randall Kaplan: You're listening to part two of my awesome interview with Sean Payton, one of the best of most successful coaches in NFL history, and the current head coach of the Denver Broncos. If you haven't yet listened to part one of my interview with Sean, be sure to check that one out first. Now without further ado, here's part two of my interview with the awesome Sean Payton. So 2006 rolls around and you an opportunity coach the team that's a laughing stock of the league had won, I think, one playoff game in 39 years in the league, if I'm not mistaken.
• 1:09
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, you had the opportunity to go to New Orleans. It was five months after Hurricane Katrina,
• 1:16
  Sean Payton: right after post Katrina, that's right. So 56 post Katrina. So
• 1:20
  Randall Kaplan: why take a chance? I go to the laughingstock. Is it because if you don't improve, it's not your fault, or is it an opportunity to see it can't get any worse?
• 1:29
  Sean Payton: There's probably a little bit of all of it. Our season ended in Dallas in oh six, and I went and interviewed in Green Bay. That was a job you wanted. It was, I'm from Chicago, and that, look, that job, I think, you know, carried that,
• 1:48
  Randall Kaplan: yeah, Lambo, you got Wrigley, you
• 1:50
  Sean Payton: got everything right. You got the history there. I interviewed with Green Bay, came back, interviewed with New Orleans, and was scheduled to interview with Buffalo. And while I was on my interview in New Orleans, I met Mickey Loomis. Certainly, he was the GM, so he was the guy interviewing me, and he was the one bright spot. Because, look, this is five months post Katrina, so you still feel the effects everywhere. I mean it, you know, it, it was, and Mickey, to his credit, didn't hide it like, you know, the windows weren't tinted or anything. We saw it all and and so that first day when he's taken me around, have you ever been somewhere where you're kind of listening and I kind of like him, and yet you're tuned out because you're thinking, There's no way I'm coming here. I'm waiting to hear about Green Bay, and that was me a little bit.
• 2:42
  Sean Payton: And so you have that moment you're freshening up and check the cell phone get a voicemail from the late Ted Thompson, hey, we're going in a different direction. I'm like, Wow. I remember throwing the phone into the pillow and just thinking, Man, I Yeah. And then, you know, here it is again. You're regrouping and and now it's like, all right, I didn't, for some reason, there's some I didn't want to go to the northeast again. Marv levy was, was the acting president at that time for Buffalo. Great head coach, yeah, yeah, fantastic.
• 3:21
  Sean Payton: Hall of Fame head coach. I knew I couldn't get in the habit of turning these jobs down like, you know, and so I went back and Mickey and I spoke again a couple times, and then, you know, he says, Hey, I'm going to call you. I think it was Tuesday night after I speak with the owner, and we're going to offer you the head job. I just want you to be a heads up. And so I remember my wife feeling somewhat apprehensive. I mean, I think she was like, All right, this is three years from removed from the Raiders. But, you know, this is a challenge. And we were at a Jon Bon Jovi concert, and, you know, I got the vibrating phone, and this is back when it was like, I'm going to give you, well, so it's Oh, six, it's probably a razor, and I step outside, and I'm kind of in the outskirts of the arena, and he's offered me the job. And then here we go. What happened?
• 4:26
  Sean Payton: Coincidentally, though, breeze, you know, kind of comes next, and then there's a series of events. How we all end up there is pretty unique, and it's kind of how life can kind of take you in certain paths, but we all got in for football, and all of a sudden it became a little bit more than just football because of what had taken place there.
• 4:53
  Sean Payton: Five months earlier. We had immediate success in that first year, we went to the championship game, and we come home at the airport. Would be 3500
• 5:01
  Randall Kaplan: people there, right? I think in all our careers, it's very hard you like to go with the flow and have the courage and alone is really, really hard to do. You're a new coach, and you take a bet on a guy that is a torn rotator cuff may never throw again, and the only team that wanted it was the Miami Dolphins, but you are betting your future on this quarterback? Yeah, ultimately became the number two pass and number two yards, number two completion percentage holds behind Tom Brady. Every important record has a quarterback. What were you thinking? And I think you're betting everything on this guy.
• 5:34
  Sean Payton: Well, do you remember the scene in Jerry Maguire? And I think it's Tom Cruise, and like, he decides, like, he says, I'm going, and he grabs the goldfish, and he like, Who wants to go with me? And it's like, crickets in there.
• 5:47
  Sean Payton: And then finally, couple guys, well, there, no, it's just, it's just he's got the goldfish. And Renee zellwinger, like, stands up. She said, I'll go. And that was it. And so we had to be somewhat aggressive. And the unique thing about Drew's injury, there have been a few quarterbacks that had a torn rotator no one. There was just no precedent for a fully torn one. So we couldn't look back to 1978 this player was there. It just had never happened. So I think a lot of it was our belief in the things we knew to be true about Drew. In fact, I know that was the case we were. We were betting on, like, if anyone's going to rehab this the way he needs to, if anyone's going to approach this, because the Chargers had just released him, and they had drafted Phillip rivers the year before. So he becomes available, and we're recruiting him. Miami's recruiting him, and ultimately, Miami does offer him a contract with just less guarantee. We we offer him a bigger contract, and we just had to be aggressive, because, you know, I think we had the second pick of the draft, and if we knew there was one of these just blue chip quarterbacks, we might have approached it differently, but I don't think we felt well. We didn't feel strong enough we were evaluating that class, but that allowed us to take the best player available rather than possibly reach for a quarterback Hurricane
• 7:26
  Randall Kaplan: Katrina. For those people who are a little younger and don't really remember, yeah,
• 7:30
  Sean Payton: oh, five August, I think, oh, $586 billion in
• 7:34
  Randall Kaplan: property damage.
• 7:34
  Randall Kaplan: 1392 people died. You played your season away, so you have a home game. So
• 7:39
  Sean Payton: that was, that was the so the saints played their season away. I'm at the Cowboys.
• 7:42
  Sean Payton: That's the o5 season. So the saints relocated to San Antonio.
• 7:48
  Sean Payton: They set up kind of their facility there. They played some home games in San Antonio. I think Randy. They played a couple in Baton Rouge. But really a hogspot, a disarray, and it was really, quite honestly, and let's it wasn't the priority, even, because New Orleans went through a stretch where, like we as a country, were like, are we going to get this city back? Because most of it is under sea level, and so how much are we going to lose of this city, you know, or is education coming back? Is are the hospitals coming back?
• 8:25
  Sean Payton: What's the infrastructure going to look like? Those were as just as are the saints going to return? There was question of whether they were going to return. And so that happens in oh five, that team that season finishes their three and 13, and now they're relocating. In fact, the day I interview in New Orleans was their second day back in their home offices from San Antonio. And mind you, the home offices were taken over by FEMA, and like the National Guard, and it was one of the search and rescue kind of like, you know, one of the locations they used to fly helicopters off the lawns. So there were a lot of things going on in the city that were, it was in recovery mode, right? So
• 9:15
  Randall Kaplan: let's talk about the first game back in the video, they played at midfield.
• 9:17
  Randall Kaplan: You later said that that moment you thought was more important emotionally than winning the Super Bowl. Yeah, so what? What were you feeling when all these people, I
• 9:27
  Sean Payton: made this comment, I think that, oh, 16, we had a long training camp because, you know, we went away for camp.
• 9:35
  Sean Payton: There was nothing ready in New Orleans. I think we're seven weeks in in Jackson, Mississippi. And then, of course, our train or our preseason games were on the road. And then our home preseason games were in Shreveport and Jackson, they were on the road. And then we opened the first two weeks of the season on the road. Because all of this waiting for the there was a lot of damage done to the Superdome. So week one.
• 9:55
  Sean Payton: We beat Cleveland. We had a really good win against Green Bay, and now we're coming home.
• 10:04
  Sean Payton: We're going to have our first regular season home game, and this is going to, I think, be a national TV game. It is Monday Night Football. Oh, they brought in entertainment. Bono, there's really going to be almost like a rebirth celebration for the city that you know they're back, the Superdome is fixed, and my concern is the head coach is like so there's a lot to this, right? I mean, there's a lot of emotion to what we're discussing for this game, and yet, it only you know, none of these things are special if you don't win.
• 10:38
  Sean Payton: And so we'd not played a home game, so half the team hadn't taken their cars to the Superdome to get ready for a home game. And so, you know, we kind of go through I take them there, in fact, the night before to play this video, I wanted them to get all this out of the way so that we could focus on football Sunday or Monday. So we had a practice there, turned the lights off, put the video board up, kind of recreated what was going to happen Monday night, and all that was great. And so here it is, Monday night.
• 11:11
  Sean Payton: Normally, guys are at the stadium coaches three and a half, four hours before the game. Breeze like clockwork, four hours before the game. You have to be there two hours prior. That's the cutoff. And so we're going through early warm ups, early outs, and man, Drew's still not there yet. You know it's he's got another 40 minutes, but it's unusual. He's not there. We're now down to, like, 15 minutes, and he's going to be late, and we get when he got caught in traffic, you got you two green day, you got all this going on. And this is, this is what concerned me. He got caught in traffic, and he's got this old Land Rover with like the grill on top, and he we get the police out finally to escort him to the stadium. He pulls up into the parking garage, and his truck gets stuck in the concrete barrier, like, you can't make this up. Now, I'm looking at my watch, and I'm like, he's got eight minutes, or I have to find him and but the problem isn't any of that, it's just that I know how, I know how, how he's so scheduled, and I know even though he's late, this is gonna I'm like, Man, I hope this doesn't affect him, because this means there's an hour and 50 minutes of stuff he normally does that he's not going to be able to do, like, you know, in other words, in his routine. And he throws the keys. We were just talking about this the other day, throws the keys in his car seat, says, Help me park that it's wedged. They're gonna have to, like, take the air out of his tires, by the way. And he runs down the hallway, and here he comes and and I'm like, hey, it's good. You can make it. You know, this is like, our first home game he plays. Well, it's one of those games Steve Gleason blocks the punt, and early on it was so it was as loud of a stadium as you can ever remember. But there were tears with it. There was emotions with it. This is when I kind of referenced earlier, when you realize this was bigger than football like that night. And anyone that was there that night would have said, Wow, that that was, it was hard for any of us to to anticipate, that's what it was going to be like. And it was like, you know, when it ended, you're like, holy cow. And then we had something, we're three and Oh, and, you know, we always talk about confidence. You can wish for it, you can think it.
• 13:44
  Sean Payton: You could say, I'm confident, but it's only born out of demonstrated ability. And so we won week one, and I I didn't know what kind of team we had, you know, I knew we'd be tough, but and then we won week two, and then we won week three, and then pretty soon, well, doesn't matter what we think we're going to be, this team thinks they're pretty good, right? And so we went on and went to the NFC Championship game. That's that first year, one game away from the Super Bowl in so in all those years, I would say that might not have been our best team, but in a bar fight, that team would have beaten any of them. Every
• 14:22
  Randall Kaplan: athlete, every kid, man, woman, doesn't matter.
• 14:26
  Randall Kaplan: Wants to win the championship.
• 14:26
  Randall Kaplan: Doesn't matter what you play in the biggest, second, biggest, second, most popular sport in the world, soccer's first but in the US football, football is king. You win the Super Bowl.
• 14:35
  Randall Kaplan: 2008 2009 30 Yeah. 31 to 17 against the Colts. What was the feeling in that game? The exact feeling, if you can close your eyes and say, I know we're going to win, and then when you actually won, what, what did you say to yourself? I
• 14:51
  Sean Payton: I think this, you always start with, man, what's the message to the team? And and there's four things you can be.
• 15:00
  Sean Payton: An event, you can be the favorite or the underdog, and then the other two things you can be is the better team or the worst team. So then, if I give you those combinations, you can be the better team, that's the favorite, that happens a lot, right? And you can be the worst team in the underdog, that's two. You don't ever want to be the worst team in the favorite.
• 15:31
  Sean Payton: That's three. But you really, as a coach, want to be the better team as the underdog. And I told our players that, and I said, I think we're the better team, and we're, you know, a seven and a half, eight point underdog. And so you, you, you create the message for the next two weeks, because you have the that additional week. And so that's quite a bit of time. And it's a game where there's a lot more distractions, more tickets, family members, that and a lot of these distractions are coming from within. So anyway, that was the message. It didn't start out well. In fact, it was fairly low scoring. It was sloppy game in the first half, and then I think the second half was entirely different. And I know there was the onside kick, but, but there was so much more execution by both teams. This became a higher scoring game. And then, of course, we get the turnover by Tracy Porter and that, you know, we needed that to secure a two score lead. And here's that moment where you're looking at the clock, and there's call it 38 seconds, and they have the ball, but they're down 14. And I remember thinking, God, it's Peyton Manning, though, and I've seen him do some crazy things, you know. And so it took me a while to finally say, All right, you know, like, you know, we're wearing a mic for this whole thing. There's a six hour wire, and you don't really get begin to enjoy it until, like, you know for sure, and then they turn it over on downs. We have the ball, we take a knee, and they don't use a timeout, in other words, right? It begins to tick down. I think at that moment in the Gatorade hits you and and then it's kind of surreal.
• 17:26
  Randall Kaplan: Well, what is it like? Surreal?
• 17:32
  Sean Payton: It's it's it's everything. It's everything you work towards. You know, I'll tell you what it's like. You The hardest thing about that game, most teams or leagues will have that in the locker room. Our league puts it in the podium midfield, so you you're never with your team again. You're not back in the locker room with them. You know, there's, there's sets over here, interviews.
• 17:55
  Sean Payton: There's no closure with your team. There's no bring it up.
• 17:58
  Sean Payton: Great job. You had it the week before the championship game.
• 18:01
  Sean Payton: You don't have it in the Super Bowl. And so one by one, we're getting on the busses. We're all showering, and the busses are waiting. There's five busses, bus 123, you ride the same bus.
• 18:10
  Sean Payton: You always ride and and all week long, when you're in that game, you get, like, this presidential police escort, and that just tells you how many vehicles and the highway parts, and we're probably 26 minutes from the Intercontinental in Miami. We were in Miami, and the Colts were in Fort Lauderdale, and we're on bus one, and the bus driver's backing up, and he takes off, and we begin the trip down the highway. And I remember thinking to myself, I said, bussy. And he turned to me, and I said, slow down, because we knew, once we got to that hotel that, you know, once our eyes closed that night, it's, you know, it's gonna that you want it to last. And I said, just slow down a little bit. You're, you're, they're all following you. And, yeah, it's that, it's that Shawn Shawshank moment, where you're, you're having a Mick Ultra, and you're on a bus, and you're just kind of, but there is a little bit of, and I say this because I remember it on the bus. It's, I remember turning to vit saying, man, there's no more games to play.
• 19:23
  Sean Payton: And you're a little bit like, God, I hate that. It's over, meaning you had a good run going. You like coaching this, this team, and this team has been magnificent. You're like, I hate that it's over. And, like, there's that postpartum bit that's like, God, I wish I could play one more game next week or, you know, and so you want to just slow it down, enjoy it.
• 20:42
  Randall Kaplan: What would your parents have said to you when you won that
• 20:46
  Sean Payton: game? Well, I would have heard my mom at the stadium so and then my dad for. Probably would have said something quietly, like, Great job, you know, but, but, yeah, I would have heard my mom. I don't care where we played. She was just loud, like, and she was unapologetic, you know? It was like, Hey, I'm gonna so now they were, my father wasn't. My mother was was alive when we played in the Super Bowl down in Tampa when I was at the giants, and you know, we played the Ravens. They had a great defense. We don't score a touchdown on offense. We have one kick return. A lopsided Super Bowl game. And then so when you're on the losing end of that game, that you kind of get roped off and pushed into your locker room, and then finally, back at the hotel, and it's only your mother that could say, Great job tonight. And I'm like, What game are you watching? You know, but they would have been, yeah, they would have been proud, because, you know, they were the ones in the carpool lines. They were the ones signing you up for Little League, you know, all of it. And you know they were, they were shoot a part of the whole journey.
• 21:55
  Randall Kaplan: You're a family guy. I'm a Family Guy. I was very lucky at a young age to make a bunch of money, so I was my own boss. You don't have that luxury when you coach a team. We talk about the demands of being a coach. Missed your sister's wedding, but talk about how hard it is to be a coach, and then talk about why you stepped down after 15 years. I think saints coach, yeah,
• 22:17
  Sean Payton: I think the challenge is, is there, look, being, being a coach, being being an NFL head coach, and certainly a college head coach, and it's seasonal. When I mean by that, there's a six month period where there's not a lot of free time, so you do miss certain things. And then there's some things that you get to do, though, you know with your children that that don't happen normally,
• 22:45
  Randall Kaplan: or a rock star never wants to hang with you, yeah? But, I
• 22:47
  Sean Payton: mean, I think more importantly that, you know, like we made a big deal in New Orleans when we went there as Win, lose or draw after any home game, win, lose or draw that we were going to have a touch football game on the field afterwards with all the players and coaches, kids like at the Superdome. So, you know, the game's over, you'll clean up, you come back out, and the kids are already out there with the you know, there's, like, somebody, an older kid's gonna be the full time quarterback, and there's eight on this team, eight on this team. And the young kids you'll win, lose or draw, they're just fired up to be out there playing. And I think you have to be more creative and create opportunities, you know, like Monday night, family night for dinner in season. It's an opportunity where the you know, the young children, come in see their dad before the work week starts. So I think any career comes with a here are some of the things that make this job difficult, but here's a cool thing about this job, and I think that that's kind of one of these jobs, but certainly you're going to miss some events, like, there's going to be some things where you're on the phone saying, Hey, I'm proud of you and and because of, because of the schedule, but then there's going to be that moment where I got a picture of my son and my daughter, and Connor's blowing a bubble, And he's on the he's on the stage at the Super Bowl as, like, you know, an eight, nine year old boy, and he's like, this is kind of what we do. You know, this is, this is, this is what we do. So, you know, having him around, or my daughter around, she's now in sports with FanDuel, my son just finished school at TCU. It probably shaped a little bit of how they chose their fields. Talk
• 24:42
  Randall Kaplan: about what it takes to be successful. One of the things that made me successful is something I call extreme preparation. So if someone prepares for a podcast one hour, I'm going 10. Yeah, it's 15 or 20. No, no, I get it.
• 24:53
  Randall Kaplan: How important is extreme preparation? Extreme preparation? I
• 24:56
  Sean Payton: think, look, we have to be maniacal with the details. Someone says, Why one in one morning? It's hard to explain the video the game plan, but I think that term applies to what we do, extreme preparation, and call it whatever you want, but I think that we have to be we have to be good teachers. We can know it, but we've got to find a way for it to resonate with with our team and and then I think just as importantly, we have to identify who we're looking for relative to putting together this culture as we build, you know, and if we're not paying attention to that, we can be fantastic with the details we can out prepare our opponent. It. But if we don't have the right people in this team setting, then we're going to be tired and unsuccessful. A
• 26:01
  Randall Kaplan: lot of people will say quarterbacks the most important position on the field today. Top three quarterbacks average $52 million a year. Head coaches average $6.6 million a year. You were offered, reportedly, $100 million father, man made dolphins for four years. Didn't take it. You're rumored to be the highest or second highest paid coach in the league. Who's more important to winning quarterbacks or coaches?
• 26:24
  Sean Payton: Well, look, let's follow the money and say, Look, you got to have the quarterback.
• 26:29
  Sean Payton: But I think this, this one's easy for me, because this is only until recently that we that, like, even when a team like New England wins six Super Bowls, goes to nine, whatever that we got to dissect like the credit here, and the bottom line is, you got a great quarterback, Hall of Famer, you got first ballot, Hall of Fame, quarterback, head coach and ownership group, and all of it is important and and so you know a fantastic movie script, and you got, you know De Niro, or one of these great directors, and if you're successful, enjoy it, because you know how hard it is. But certainly the quarterback position touches the ball 70 times, 75 times a game.
• 27:22
  Sean Payton: And I always like to say, we all get on that plane and go right, and the starting quarterback goes up those steps and he goes left. So you have to have really, really good players, and you have to have good teachers, and so it's a team sport, and so it makes for good discussion relative to what's most important. But the key is what's necessary and you have to have, you have to have that ying and yang, and that's what we're working on here.
• 28:05
  Randall Kaplan: I finished every podcast with a game called fill in the blank to excellence. One word answers are ready to play.
• 28:11
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, here we go. A number one personal goal in life is,
• 28:14
  Sean Payton: I would say health and happiness.
• 28:17
  Randall Kaplan: The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is
• 28:22
  Sean Payton: patience.
• 28:24
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, patience.
• 28:24
  Randall Kaplan: My number one personal goal is
• 28:28
  Sean Payton: win another Super Bowl with a different a different team.
• 28:31
  Randall Kaplan: My biggest fear is getting old. If you are the commissioner of the league right now, the first thing I would do is,
• 28:42
  Sean Payton: if I'm the commissioner of the NFL, the first thing I would do is, I would begin to they've already done a good job with player safety, but I would really begin to look closely at like what's on the horizon relative to our officiating challenges, because I think those guys do a great job. But it's becoming more and more complex.
• 29:02
  Randall Kaplan: The Broncos don't win the Super Bowl this year. The team that I hope wins it is nobody, not the Detroit Lions. Got Dan Campbell,
• 29:12
  Sean Payton: former saints. Sure fill in the blank. Okay,
• 29:15
  Randall Kaplan: if you could, if you could go back in time and give your 21 year old self one piece of advice. What would it be?
• 29:24
  Sean Payton: Yeah, that's a good one, because I don't know if I gave my 21 year old self this piece of advice that I would have been informed in such a way. In other words, I don't think we want the cheat code, but I'd certainly say, let's not worry about the anhills and focus more on the things that are more important. But I think there's something that happens when you do this that's necessary, so be careful sometimes with the cheat code.
• 29:54
  Randall Kaplan: The one question you wish I'd asked you but didn't, is
• 29:57
  Sean Payton: I don't have one.
• 29:57
  Sean Payton: It's been a good interview.
• 30:00
  Randall Kaplan: Appreciate you being here. Thanks for taking your time. We're an awesome guy.
• 30:02
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you. Good luck to you.
• 30:05
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you guys. Kill it, except against the lions. No offense to you. Yeah, that's,
• 30:08
  Sean Payton: that's not my god Dan Campbell, and he's a stud.
• 30:12
  Sean Payton: Yeah, great guy.
• 30:13
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you guys for coming. Appreciate you.
• 30:15
  Randall Kaplan: We'll see you next week. You.