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Faulk has had a longstanding relationship with Payton that dates to when Payton was his position coach while at San Diego State in the early 1990s.

"I think for Sean the one thing that he is always going to do that really helped me is he's all about growing the talent," Faulk said. "He's never going to let you sit and rest on, 'This is how good you are, this is how good you can be.' He's always going to push you."

Faulk said Payton "understood at a young age that I knew football and I was able to retain a lot of information. He overloaded me. At a time when asking running backs to take a test was unheard of in college, he gave me the quarterback test because he understood that I knew more. That was something that, off the field, grew me as a player mentally and physically, pushing me and asking me to do more."

Payton appeared to carry that approach of "overloading" players through his NFL coaching career, Faulk said.

"Marques Colston, he don't come here and develop here with the Saints, (and) Jimmy Graham wasn't a guy who was sought after," Faulk said. "He's going to develop players. (Travaris) Cadet. Just look at the guys that they bring in and you're like, 'Aw, I really don't know.' Chris Ivory. These are guys that come into the league and they stay, but they were unknown guys. They come here, they play with Sean, he groomed them, asks a lot of them, and whether they're here or other places, they stay (in the NFL). Lance Moore is still in the league. We didn't know if Lance could play in this league when he first came in."

Marshall Faulk remembers when 'nobody wanted' Sean Payton, Drew Brees | 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."