Broncos Mailbag: How can Sean Payton, Denver offense avoid another slow start against New Orleans?
Sean Payton has a story for just about everything.
He uses them to make a point or teach a lesson. Flash some charm or establish control.
Reminisce about good times past or forecast the future.
He has one he likes about Drew Brees on the night they played their first game together at the Superdome in New Orleans, late September 2006.
Brees got stuck in traffic on I-10 and was late getting to the stadium for Monday Night Football against Atlanta. Then, he got to the parking ramp, which had low clearance.
“He pulls in and his roof gets stuck in the parking garage. You can’t make this up,” Payton regaled last summer. “He leaves the keys in the car, wedged in the cement concrete building, and runs down the hallway.
“I’m sitting there, and it’s right at two hours (before kickoff), and I’m like, ‘Glad you could make it.’ I’m just a mess now because he’s (there) four hours before the game normally.”
The Saints won that night to get to 3-0. They started 5-1 and stormed to the NFC Championship Game in Year 1. Then the pairing proceeded to make the city and the stadium their home for 14 years together.
They won often. They won big. They won easily. They faced scandal and hardship, too, over the years, but they became part of the fabric of the city. Inextricably linked to both the place and each other.
Now Payton leads the Broncos to the Superdome and in the process will for the first time occupy the unfamiliar half of the most familiar stadium he’s ever been in. It may be the most uncomfortable he’s felt there since that day 18 years ago when Brees crunched the top of his Land Rover.
It’s always a little strange, after all, going back to somewhere you spent so much time.
“I have no idea where the buses pull up,” Payton said Tuesday. “It’ll just be a new (experience).”
New and old at the same time.
Nostalgia will pump through the building between Payton — and the nearly two dozen Broncos staffers and players who used to work or play in New Orleans — being back, the induction of Brees into the Saints’ Hall of Fame and all of the former players who will be on hand to see both.
But while that fondness clearly remains in Payton, this world is a long time gone for him in a way that is not necessarily so true for Brees, the Saints and the city of New Orleans.
He’s headlong into trying to crack the code on delivering the Broncos back to relevance, and that job has already proven far tougher than the one he had starting with the Saints.
He’s trying to overcome a relatively slow start to his tenure. Denver is 10-7 since this time last year but 11-12 overall under Payton and still without a playoff appearance since Super Bowl 50.
He’s operating in a division run by a surefire Hall of Fame quarterback/coach pairing in Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, the likes of which …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – Sports
