WhoDat!656

Phoenix - New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton reminded the throng of media sitting at his table during Wednesday's media session at the NFL owners meetings that he's been back on the job for nearly two months after serving his season-long suspension in connection to the bounty scandal. It also reminded Payton just how much work remains to revitalize his team.

There are big issues such as revamping the Saints' defense into a 3-4 scheme and how to improve a once thriving rushing attack on offense. And Payton has to find out who will protect quarterback Drew Brees' blindside with Jermon Bushrod now playing for the Chicago Bears and who will play both outside linebacker positions.

"Let's not be an alarmist here," Payton said. "There's plenty of time for us to find guys that can fit this defense and offense. Look, we're evaluating everybody ... we're evaluating the defensive players, the offensive players like we just came to coach them, first year. Players will know that. We're just going to go by what we see. That's been good to us regardless of how they've been acquired - drafted, signed as a free agent or somebody that made the team on a tryout basis.

"It's no interest to me how they got here once they're here. There's no ties at all to any of our draft picks or the fact that they were part of our program. We're looking at everyone like we just arrived. But to your point though, obviously, when you make a switch there are elements that are voided right now. That would be some outside linebacker positions. Who's going to be our left tackle? If you ask me what keeps me up at night, there would be two areas: how are we going to improve our pass rush and how are we going to be at left tackle?"

Then there are the things, maybe not as important in the grand scheme of things, but jotted down on Payton's lengthy "to-do list" of how to fix the Saints. Like why is there so much clutter along the sides of the indoor practice facility, or why did someone take his chair in a meeting room.

New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton says allowing big runs in 2012 were troublesome Saints Coach Sean Payton gives his reasoning why he wanted to switch to a 3-4 defensive scheme during Wednesday's media session at the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix Watch video


"All of a sudden the indoor facility has got clutter all around the side," Payton said. "I've got one employee who's coming in on different hours. And you must just see one thing and think well it's just me. And I think human nature when we get entrenched in our jobs each year you want to put another layer of bricks around your castle, and if you're not careful these things will be all the way up to everyone's noses.

"That's human nature with any job. All of a sudden you leave and I like your chair a little bit better than mine so I just switch the chairs. That's like the No. 1 office coups. I get your chair and the guy on the block has this (as Payton shakes the chair). ... It's no different when you're gone for two weeks and you come back and the relative has had the children and they're eating Snickers, they haven't washed before they go to bed and you're just kind of like what kind of schedule are we on now. ... That kind of stuff will have you at 11:30 at night turning the light on and then writing two notes so you can go to sleep."

The combination of all of these major and minor problems after being removed from the scene for so long is why Payton emphasized numerous times Wednesday how he wants this offseason to be like his first in New Orleans in 2006.

Payton said it would be a dangerous mind-set to think the Saints would just flip a switch and become the team that won 41 games from 2009-2011.

"That's not real," Payton said. "We could turn around and win five games if you don't correct some of what's (faulty). So there's a lot of things that's changed. By the time you leave a building and come back and you wonder ... I mean I've got a list of things that I've noticed just in a short period of time. And then you come back and you think, 'Well when did this start happening?' In the building, within the framework of your club, your team. When did this start happening?

"You've got players up by the sidelines, guys wearing their hats (like he wouldn't like), there's a bunch of stuff that would drive me crazy on gameday. You had a bench penalty. We had one. I told the staff the other day if we ever have a bench penalty in a game, during any game, after my coronary attack you're going to deal with me. Just certain things and elements. ... People would ask, 'Are you energized.' I would say, 'Yeah, I'm rested.' You come off a long season and then you try to catch your wind and get ready again.

"But the challenge of doing this years and years and years, in Year 11 do you have the same attention to detail about something you didn't like and you make the correction. It exists with parenting. At some point, you're up one late night and you don't get any sleep, there's a behavior here in place ... you might not handle it like you know you need to. It's the same thing in teaching. Are you willing to address, correct and confront every little thing that you know.

"Because when you stop doing that, you know at night that you're allowing certain things to slide and it's going to (get out of hand). So when you're away for a while and you come back and the swing set is messy and there's dirty diapers that are in the garbage can that would normally be empty every day, you start seeing things and thinking, 'Well how could this have happened?' It just begins to happen. It's not just one person's fault."

Payton's philosophy could be taken figuratively and literally considering he said he runs into players in the Saints facility who played last season - like linebackers Curtis Lofton, David Hawthorne and guard Ben Grubbs - who he's never coached. Then there are the players in the building who he's never met, players from last year's draft class.

But much of the Wednesday's media session centered around how Payton handled his unprecedented suspension. Payton echoed what he's mentioned in the last few weeks about how it took him a couple of weeks to calm his anger and bitterness over NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's harsh penalties.

Payton also said how he crossed off some things from his bucket list like running a half-marathon, getting back into shape and maintaining regular visits to the dentist.

Payton was asked if his thought process during his suspension mirrored the cliché of "everything happen for a reason."

"I don't know that I would say everything happens for a reason," Payton said. "I would say everything happens."

Payton discussed how much time he was able to spend with his children, in particular coaching his son's sixth-grade football team.

Payton said it pained him to watch the Saints struggle last season from his couch because there wasn't anything he could do to help as they finished 7-9. But watching another team defeat his son's team this fall brought a different sort of pain, and Payton tried to pull out all of the stops to prevent that from happening.

"When we'd lose a game and only score seven points, I'm upset because I know there's some other defensive coordinator that's going home and celebrating with his wife," Payton said. "The one team we couldn't beat was this single-wing team. I talked to (Bill) Parcells about it and (Jon) Gruden. We had every defense in the sun and we still hadn't found the football."

Sean Payton says he's planning on turning back the clock to 2006 | NOLA.com

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."

foreverfan

Man... It's good to have the COACH BACK!!!

73Saint

"I told the staff the other day if we ever have a bench penalty in a game, during any game, after my coronary attack you're going to deal with me."

Hell yeah, the man is back!

CharityMike

Man I can just see it now...everybody gets on the practice field..Rush "Tom Sawyer" starts to play in the background...game on!!

hagan714

back to having fun doing play calls? nice its been missing for the past few years. i will know if he serious if he puts a wr in motion deep in the backfield for that reverse look more than once and a while in a game.

our play calling has become well by our standards pretty plain.

QBREES9

Let's Do It !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NonieT

I believe predictable is the word your searching for!

Crusader

Arses will be found by a swift kick.

SaintsBro

"I don't know that I would say everything happens for a reason," Payton said. "I would say everything happens."

Translation: the suspension and Bounty penalties happened, but that wasn't the real reason for them, and not everything that Goodell said happened, really did happen. It was a trick question, trying to get Payton to indirectly admit that the allegations were true and Goodell was right and he and the Saints did something wrong, and Coach Payton wouldn't take the bait. In fact he tells you plain as day with this, that there was more going on, that it was all about Goodell and a witch hunt.

This actually kind of confirms AGAIN what I've always felt since the day they were announced, that the suspension and the penalties had more to do with other things besides just the so-called Bounties. He's flat out saying, bounties are not the "reason" his suspension happened! I've always believed it was about specific discipline things that had happened previously, that Goodell couldn't "get" them for, so Goodell went hard after Payton, Loomis, Vitt, Smith, Vilma, and Hargrove, with the Bounty thing.

Budsdrinker

Just like this new stupid helmet rule for RB's. It's all political to fight the concussion lawsuit. If the lawsuit wouldn't be going on, the suspensions wouldn't have happen and this new helmet rule wouldn't have happened.
It's not protect the shield, it's protect the pocketbooks.