You are living a life, as longtime NFL scout Dwaune Jones tells it, of Jimmy John’s. Of Marriott points — maybe Hilton, if the city calls for it. Of long drives and sterile sheets, trapped in tiny spaces with your thoughts. Drive around schools, return to the hotel, work out, type up reports, call family, sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
All done, ultimately, in the pursuit of striking gold on the next football great from some small town — a young man whom you will get little public credit for discovering and certainly none for developing.
“It can be real isolated,” Jones said, “and lonely.”
This is the job of an NFL scout for long stretches of the year. And this is what made it all the more special when Sean Payton sweetened the pot for a couple of years with the Saints.
He first arrived in New Orleans on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, the roof of the Superdome caved in, the city and franchise in disarray. The team temporarily relocated its facilities to San Antonio in 2005. It was a “mess,” as former scout Jim Monos recalled. But Payton signed Drew Brees, snagged Reggie Bush and came into his first draft in New Orleans emphasizing one particular aspect of roster-building: the undrafted free agent.
Payton told scouts in those early days, Monos recalled, to bring him one UDFA candidate apiece that the Saints would host on an in-house 30 visit. And he offered a cash prize of roughly $1,000 out of his own pocket, multiple former Saints scouts told The Denver Post, to anyone who signed an undrafted rookie who eventually made New Orleans’ roster.
“Trust me,” Monos said, “that felt like you hit the lottery.”
The incentive only lasted a few years. But the emphasis on the post-draft process has only grown across Payton’s 17-year NFL career, as his organizations have mined a long list of gems from players who’ve fallen through the cracks of the NFL draft. The Saints found Pierre Thomas. They found Chris Ivory. They found Lance Moore.
Those New Orleans hits have become “data” for roster-building in Denver, as Payton put it to media last Saturday. The Broncos inked 15 UDFAs this past cycle. It’s a carousel that spins on self-sufficient energy, with coaches, scouts and Payton himself able to draw undrafted talent by pitching them on past successes.
“He’s a pretty good recruiter,” general manager George Paton told The Post. “He’s pretty good at that.”
Of course, Payton was an undrafted rookie himself once — a standout at FCS Eastern Illinois who played quarterback for three games with the 1987 “Spare Bears” during the NFL players’ strike. His affinity for hitting on undrafted prospects, former players and coaches say, traces back decades.
“He likes the underdog story,” said former Saints linebacker Jo-Lonn Dunbar, who once latched on in New Orleans as a UDFA. “I mean, it could be because he was an underdog, man. He’s that kind of guy.”
•••
One early morning in 1987, Mike Hohensee staggered home from a late shift as a bartender to find a note awaiting him from his roommate.
The Bears called you.
Hohensee crumpled it up, tossed it in the trash and went to sleep.
He was briefly the starting quarterback for the ’87 Chicago Bears, in a year unlike any in NFL history. Across a roughly three-week players’ strike, desperate franchises scrounged to the ends of the earth to find replacement athletes to break the picket line. Hohensee was one, once he realized that the note was legit. Payton, then a 24-year-old former standout at Eastern Illinois, was another.
Hohensee remembers a few things about Payton, his roommate on the road with those Bears. He was hospitable. He was friendly. And he was not comfortable backing up a bartender.
“He wanted to make sure — if I went in there and crapped the bed,” Hohensee remembered, “that he was ready, and didn’t crap the bed.”
Payton spent three weeks that winter grinding tape, as night turned to morning, a group on the fringes trying to avoid anything that would incur Mike Ditka’s wrath. He’s spent the four decades since competing much the same. In his first NFL job in the late 1990s, coaching quarterbacks for the Philadelphia Eagles, he’d hop into minigames of chuck-the-football-at-the-trash-can for $50 a pop. For years to come with the Saints, he’d “talk (trash)” to his defenses in practice, Dunbar chuckled, egging them on with a cry of, “Who’s gonna win this play?”
“He will do anything,” former Saints undrafted DE Kasim Edebali said, “to find that one thing that gives him the edge to be victorious.”
In 2007, the Saints took running back Antonio Pittman in the fourth round out of Ohio State. They signed back Pierre Thomas out of Illinois, too, though he wasn’t particularly big or fast. It became apparent, however, that Thomas was working harder than Pittman in fall camp, former scout Jones remembered.
So Payton cut Pittman — a fourth-rounder — for an undrafted kid.
“I had never seen anything like that before,” Jones said. “I was like, ‘God dang.’”
Two years later, in an NFC Championship game against the Minnesota Vikings, Thomas sped for a 40-yard kick return in overtime to set up a game-winning field goal. The Saints went on to win a Super Bowl.
“I’m like, the significance of something that appeared to be a small decision two years prior — was very important,” Payton reflected last Saturday.
It’s a success story Payton’s deployed for 18 years and counting. And he’s pursued types like Thomas, former players say, for traits he sees in himself.
“I think it all traces back,” said former Saints scout Mike Neu, “to him being a little bit — having that underdog mentality.”
•••
In 2010, meandering down Midwestern freeways on another scouting bender, Jones gripped the steering wheel and repeated the same prayer that’s carried him for decades in NFL scouting.
Lord, just give me the eyes. Open my eyes so I can see.
His eyes took him to a quick stop at Division II Tiffin University, a detour on a trip to Ohio State. He thought little of the visit at the time. But he took notice of a 220-pound kid named Chris Ivory, a running back who was kicked off Washington State’s team for violating team rules.
After the 2010 draft came and went, he called Ivory, who predictably hadn’t been picked.
“What other team is offering you?” Jones asked.
“Nobody,” Ivory responded, as Jones remembered.
Jones tossed Ivory a $5,000 signing bonus and wondered if he might be insane for it. Rick Reiprish, then New Orleans’ director of college scouting, told Jones the gamble was on him. Nobody on the Saints’ staff had seen him.
“But Sean,” Jones said, “didn’t flinch.”
Payton gave the back a heap of preseason reps. Ivory led the Saints in rushing as a rookie and eventually reached a Pro Bowl with the Jets in 2015. And another data point hit the map.
In his decade with the Saints through 2016, Jones recalled, Payton and the organization gave scouts wide autonomy and a heap of cash to go out and draw undrafted targets. Typically, they were kids carrying character issues or missing a couple of traits in speed or size. But there were a few unspoken guardrails, as scouts echoed, to bring in UDFAs for Payton.
“One thing we would not make exceptions for are players that didn’t love football,” Monos said, “or didn’t play (expletive) tough.”
If they did, a host of scouts, agents and players told The Post, Payton gave equal opportunity. It’s built a certain credibility in pockets of the NFL world. Undrafted players largely make decisions on post-draft landing spots based on both signing bonuses and potential for reps. Agent Mike Simon, who once repped Ivory and now reps the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, told The Post it’s “absolutely the belief” shared among agents that Payton’s organizations are a top landing spot for UDFAs.
“He’s a no-BS guy,” said agent Joe Flanagan, whose client Joaquin Davis just signed with the Broncos as a preferred free agent. “And so, that does afford those guys that perform well an opportunity.”
•••
The hits continue to roll in, years down the line. Take the Saints’ undrafted class from 2019, which ranks fourth in total NFL snaps played of any team’s UDFA group from that year, according to data compiled by The Post. Take tight end Juwan Johnson, who signed a $30 million extension with New Orleans this offseason.
Payton has yet to nail any massive difference-makers in Denver outside of Jaleel McLaughlin, who finished second on the Broncos in rushing yards in 2024, and slot corner JaQuan McMillan. But UDFA signees past and present comprise more than a quarter of the organization’s current roster.
Several from this year’s class have a real chance to stick. The Broncos called Kansas linebacker JB Brown early on in Day 3 of this April’s draft, agent Matthew Lowe told The Post, and gave him an offer ($150,000 in guaranteed money) that blew other teams out of the water. Utah’s Karene Reid brings additional polished depth at linebacker. Receivers Joaquin Davis, Jerjuan Newton and Courtney Jackson all turned heads on individual plays across last weekend’s rookie minicamp.
And the track record, if Payton and Denver strike gold on any of them, will continue to recruit itself.
As April’s draft concluded and the mad scramble for signees began, Payton called former UDFA receiver Lance Moore, now an NFL agent who reps Reid. And Payton launched into a pitch to Moore on the Utah linebacker, speaking on his organization’s blueprint over the years for undrafted players, speaking to a man woven into that very blueprint itself.
“We’ve got this history,” Payton said, as Moore recalled. “And if you need the numbers, we can show you the numbers.”
“Dude,” Moore responded, “I don’t need the numbers.”
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