Sean Payton has pulled back from the void twice, in his adult life. Twice, the competitive arena he craves has faded away, and his fire has been left with no match to burn. Twice, there’s been no need for the daily Mountain Dew and Coca-Cola binges, the chance at discovering a new offensive wrinkle that the Broncos’ head man’s eyes glued to tape until the wee morning.
One more cut-up. One more clip.
One such time came in 2022, when Payton stepped away after 15 years coaching the New Orleans Saints and took a gig working as an analyst at FOX Sports. Still, he would hardly be able to wait all week to get to the studio on Sundays. Still, FOX staff would have to kick him out of the building those nights, Payton remembered Wednesday. Still, he needed an outlet.
The other such time came in 2012, when Payton was placed on a year-long hiatus from football after his Bountygate suspension from the NFL. Still, he took up coaching his son’s sixth-grade football team and would study DVDs of opposing youth-league units. Still, he’d try and figure out ways to beat the random tykes who’d hit puberty at an early age — the Maxx Crosbys of the world, Payton hinted at his Broncos’ matchup against the Raiders this weekend — and could ruin his offense. Still, he needed an outlet.
“It’s addicting,” Payton summated. “And it’s like — where you feel like you belong.”
Over the years, Payton has found ways to ensure this game does not consume him. If his eyes glaze over during film study, he’ll go outside. He’ll take a cold shower. But he always returns.
“I hate losing more than anything in the world,” Payton said Wednesday. “And so, I think fear of failure is a very significant motivating factor.”
Now in his 18th year as a head coach, Payton still leads these 10-2 Broncos with that same obsession — a feeling that “probably ratchets up some,” he acknowledged Wednesday, because of their current position. Players know this franchise’s window has opened. Payton knows its window has opened. And in Payton’s third season in Denver, this locker room’s identity has clearly formulated around their head coach’s self-described “maniacal” approach to ensuring every possible detail is calibrated to avoid defeat.
“I sense it,” cornerback Pat Surtain II said Wednesday, asked on Payton’s hatred of losing. “It’s sort of the new motto for the building, for real.”
This bleeds into everything. There is “nothing too small that’s not significant,” as Payton said Wednesday, to avoid losing. It’s why there’s a massive quote from Bill Parcells hanging up in the team facility. And why there’s a smoke machine and a boombox in the locker room after wins. It’s dated back to Payton’s earliest years understanding how to manage the pulse of his group, when he once strolled past the linebackers’ corner of the locker room back in 2007 in New Orleans.
The linebacker group, former Saint Scott Fujita recalled, had a beat-up 24-inch TV with a VHS insert that they plugged into a column that separated them from the rest of the room. They slapped a piece of white athletic tape on the top of this hunk of junk: Linebackers’ TV. Do not touch.
Payton took a peek one day at that television —- playing never-ending reruns of the 2006 movie “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” from the VHS — and didn’t say a word. Then left.
“Come in the next week,” Fujita told the Post earlier this fall, “and we’ve got our own big-screen TV right there on our column.”
Nearly two decades later, Payton is leading a Broncos group that is similarly “addicted to the feeling of winning,” as veteran receiver Courtland Sutton described. The 30-year-old wideout has been through plenty of seasons where the playoffs weren’t even a possibility by the time December rolled around; there is now a clear sense of urgency inside Denver’s building to capitalize on this situation they’ve placed themselves in. Futility is an even further cliff to avoid, when climbing a nine-game win-streak.
Payton has a quarterback, too, who has spoken plenty about his own fear of failure. Second-year QB Bo Nix affirmed Wednesday that Payton probably hates losing more than he enjoys winning, a trait he recognizes in himself. And the head coach’s competitive defiance shows through Nix sometimes, too, a QB who vacillates between the temperament of a surfer bro and an eye-blacked general.
Asked Wednesday on appreciating the Broncos’ current situation, Nix pivoted to a pointed response to national narratives around the Broncos’ win streak.
“The worst thing you can do is let other people tear down a 10-2 record,” Nix said. “Where, they’re saying you don’t play anybody, or you’re just relying on the defense, or whatever negative somebody’s going to put on the positive. And we don’t really worry about it. We’re just excited.
“We know we’ve come a long way,” Nix said. “This franchise and organization has had some great years, and went into a little lull there for a minute. But then, it just takes a couple guys to get it back on track, and all of a sudden we’re 10-2 and right where we want to be in every aspect of our season.”
They also feel that record could be even better, Nix added. There’s that agony of defeat, again.
It’s only escalated. In Week 7, Payton installed a play for Sutton during their Saturday walkthrough, just a day before they hosted the New York Giants. That play, of course — a go-ball for Sutton that set up kicker Wil Lutz’s game-winner in a 33-32 comeback victory — worked to perfection.
And when something like that proves the difference between a win or loss, as Payton said, his search to avoid defeat will never stop.
“It’s one of those things that — I think it trickles down into the temperament of the team,” veteran receiver Courtland Sutton said. “Understanding what the expectations are.
“None of us like to lose,” Sutton continued. But we understand that the head man really doesn’t like to lose.”
Want more Broncos news? Sign up for the Broncos Insider to get all our NFL analysis.