QBREES9

1. "I was seven Bud Lights in." Sean Payton's celebratory drinking is a recurring theme and perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book. The Bud Lights line is part of his description of the Super Bowl victory parade. While preparing to toast Mayor Ray Nagin, Payton writes, "My wife squeezed my wrist and said, 'Control yourself, honey.' " After the Super Bowl, he writes, he tried to bail on the traditional morning-after press conference because, "I'd had a couple of cocktails and some Amstel Light. OK, more than a couple. ... Have you ever seen the movie 'The Hangover,' where the guy is asking, 'How did this lion get here? Where did my tooth go? Isn't that Mike Tyson?' That was Monday for me." In the image-conscious NFL, this is a downright brazen level of honesty.

2. "She was beautiful." That's Payton describing his wife, the former Beth Shuey, a Morocco, Ind., native with a marketing degree who has been part of Payton's coaching journey almost from the beginning. There's no way to read this book and not conclude that the real saints are the coaches' wives.

3. "We might not win three games this year." That's what Payton recalls telling general manager Mickey Loomis in the locker room after the Saints first preseason game -- Payton's first as Saints head coach -- in 2006. They wound up 10-6 and reached the NFC Championship Game.
4. "Without a doubt, Green Bay is where I wanted to go." Payton writes openly about the job he coveted -- head coach of the Packers -- and how hard it was to convince himself, and then his wife and children, to move to New Orleans.

5. "You like cheeseburgers?" This was Raiders owner Al Davis' dinner invitation to Payton during a hilarious, days-long interview process in Oakland for the Raiders head job. The two men dined on McDonald's burgers and KFC cole slaw in the owner's office. Payton turned down the job. Priceless.

6. "Bleep you." That was Payton's two-word response (fill in the bleep) when Reggie Bush's marketing agent, Mike Ornstein, told him not to draft Bush in 2006 because, "This kid doesn't want to come there." The Saints drafted him anyway; Payton and Ornstein became best friends.

7. "We lost 39-14, to the environment as much as to the Bears." Coaches never blame losses on the weather. But Payton's description of the Saints' defeat in Chicago in the 2006 NFC Championship pins most of the blame on the snowy, miserably cold conditions. Surprising.

8. "Let me tell you, I do a great Belichick." Payton's description of his videotaped impersonation of New England coach Bill Belichick -- a tape he played for the team the week before their Monday night game in November -- is by far the coolest behind-the-scenes passage in the book. It's also a vivid example of just how much happens in an NFL season that fans never know about.

9. "What if we get our ass beat?" This is one of those brutally honest quotes that you wish, just once, a coach would say publicly the week before a game. Payton relates it here in explaining why, among other reasons, he chose to rest his starters for the last game of the 2009 regular season at a time when many pundits were arguing that the slumping Saints should play to win.

10. "This is our reward. This bleeping ride." Payton recounts this line, uttered by assistant head coach Joe Vitt, while describing the bus ride back to the team hotel after the Super Bowl. Of all the scenes in the book, this is perhaps the most poignant: After the confetti shower and the Lombardi Trophy hoist and the post-game interviews, two coaches sit in an "almost silent" bus and savor the relief of leaving the stadium after winning the last game played. "We had been lifted by our city, and we had lifted it too," Payton writes. "What else could anybody want?"
Read our review of "Home Team," and share your own below.2. "She was beautiful." That's Payton describing his wife, the former Beth Shuey, a Morocco, Ind., native with a marketing degree who has been part of Payton's coaching journey almost from the beginning. There's no way to read this book and not conclude that the real saints are the coaches' wives.

www.sportsshooter.com/johnjcoleman

" Anyone can take a picture Only a Photographer can take a photograph "