ENFIELD, U.K. — As Sean Payton and the Broncos made their way on charter buses from Ware south to Tottenham Football Club’s training facility Wednesday for practice, the veteran head coach had a question for the bus driver.
“How far is it to Leicester?”
The practical answer: about 170 kilometers north of Denver’s practice home away from home this week in England. A couple of hours by car, depending on traffic.
The metaphorical: Leicester is situated a football lifetime ago for Payton, though he still holds the few months he spent there in 1988 as a player/coach for the British American Football Association’s Leicester Panthers in high regard, 37 years later.
“That was a long time ago,” Payton said Wednesday. … “I was 23 years old, right out of college and basically playing for pizza because I enjoyed it. It was a great six months.”
After Payton’s collegiate career at Eastern Illinois, he played in the Arena League, the Canadian Football League and then for the Chicago Bears as a replacement player during the 1987 strike season.
Payton was already starting to see the end of his playing days likely approaching when he got a call from Barry Wardle, the owner of Leicester, in the BAFA, wondering if he’d be interested in coaching and playing for Leicester.
“It was a time I can remember my mother saying, ‘All of your friends are getting married and have health insurance. What are you doing?’” Payton said.
He hemmed and hawed about the decision and said he had a conversation with Wardle about the signing bonus he’d get for taking the gig.
“Then it appeared in my checking account, and then I thought, ‘Well shoot, we’re going,’” he recalled.
What ensued, as Payton recalled Wednesday, was a formative few months. The teams had a maximum of four American players and Payton said they all lived in a house together in Leicester. They coached along with playing, but most of the lessons were about life rather than football.
“Driving on the right side of the car was fine,” Payton said. “The feet are still the same. The gas and the brakes travel the same. But it was a stick shift, so get that left hand going a little bit. That took time with the clutch. My left hand was awful, so had to pick up the slack.”
Payton’s English teammates mostly had other jobs — “from bouncers to construction,” Payton said — so most of the team would work during the day and then gather for practice in the evenings and games on weekends.
“For them, it was the love of the game,” Payton said. “The four of us lived in a house, we’d work out in the mornings, go over the practice plans together.”
The team had a good season — they went 8-5 — but Payton more remembers the relationships and experiences from that year. He’s hosting some former players from the team this week at Broncos practice and said he’s done so the two previous times he coached in London with New Orleans.
When the BAFA season ended, Payton said, he flew back to Chicago and the next day began a long drive to take a graduate assistant job at San Diego State. That’s when his car infamously broke down in Denver along the way to the West Coast.
“I was trending in (the coaching) direction,” said Payton, who has held a coaching job in college or the NFL every year since except for 2022, when he took a year off between his tenures in New Orleans and Denver. “It wasn’t like I was trending forward. So I knew here (in England) that it was going to be time to try to find a graduate assistant job.”
Some current Broncos players didn’t know about Payton’s playing time in England, but outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper flashed a wide smile when informed of the bit of history.
“I didn’t know that,” Cooper said. “That’s why he likes it out here so much, huh? That’s why he’s enjoying himself out here.”
Payton certainly enjoyed his time in Leicester, too, nearly four decades ago.
“You want to play until everybody tells you to go home,” Payton said. “I got to that point where everyone told me to go home. And I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to leave. What else can I do?’ My dad wore a suit every day. Got dressed, took a bus to a train and a train to the city.
“I knew I didn’t want to do that.”
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