Sean Payton took his time to come to his retirement decision this week, and he also made the most of his time explaining it.
The Saints coach spoke to the media for 92 minutes Tuesday afternoon, sharing thank yous, king cakes, his greatest regrets and a lot more in an expansive press conference that marks the end of a coaching era.
The coach said he has no intention to coach anywhere in 2022, but he also hasn't spoken to any media outlet regarding potential employment, despite what recent reports might have indicated.
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Whatever the future holds for Payton, his run with the Saints ends with a final record of 152-89, nine playoff appearances, a Super Bowl title and some of the most vaunted offenses of all time.
Listen to Payton's full goodbye speech in the player below, and scroll below for some of the top quotes from an emotional day out in Metairie. Can't see the embed? Click here.
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WALKING AWAY MIGHT BE HARDER THAN BEING FIRED
“It’s not often you as a coach have that opportunity to possibly leave and it’s something that certainly I hadn’t really thought about over the years. We coach, we coach, we coach and at some point they tell you to leave, and as difficult as being fired is, it sure seems easier to thank everyone and move on your merry way.”
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THE SECRET TO 'CULTURE?'
“People talk about culture and like what’s the secret. Teams right now … they’re all looking for the right culture. Everyone wants to know how, and it’s very difficult, and yet if I was writing a book I’d say it’s also very simple. The alignment of ownership, the club president, the general manager, your head coach, right through your roster. That sounds easy. But like any relationship they require work, right? It requires time and energy. It requires a similar goal. It requires us all to kind of like lay down our arms and our egos for the best of the team. If we ask that of our players, then certainly we have to ask that of our organization.”
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WHAT'S YOUR GREATEST REGRET?
"We ran a double-reverse against Tampa Bay in the 4-minute and lost the game. And Mickey brought me a study on Ambien and erratic behavior and mood swings with people. I've got a lot of regrets. I mentioned one of them, I wish I would've done a better job early on in my career with the media and hopefully I corrected that. But, yea, there are always going to be personnel regrets, decisions, but, yea, the double-reverse, the Ninkovich decision, there's a lot, there are. It's easy to say you're most proud of a Super Bowl team, but I'm most proud of the culture and the winning seasons."
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ON MICKEY, A GM ... AND A FRIEND
"He took a chance on a first-time head coach, and you guys know kind of the batting average and the challenges for these positions. They’re hard. Every year we’re reminded of that, and I’ve written about this, I’ve spoken about it, and look, I had just interviewed in Green Bay with the late Ted Thompson. Man, I thought I had a great interview, and when I landed here it was just after Katrina in January, and many of you remember that. And I just thought, when I met Mickey, I thought ‘man, I like this guy. He’s got a heck of a task ahead of him.’ And I kept looking at my flip phone at the time waiting for that Green Bay area code to come in, and I got the message that evening that they had gone a different direction. And I remember just throwing the phone into the pillow and thinking ‘holy cow.’ And it was the best thing that happened and sometimes you don’t have any control over that.
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"So he trusted his gut, and beyond just hiring me, I can’t think — we’ve had disagreements multiple times — and yet, we’ve always been in concert. And so one of my biggest, not concerns, but one of my biggest second thoughts was, ‘man, I don’t want to not be around this really, really good friend of mine.’ And so that’s not gonna happen. I’m actually moving into another property here locally, but more than my general manager, more than the person that hired me. More than all of those things is I would say one of my best friends. And I appreciate that. … I mean, I could give you a thousand stories that would be interesting because our personalities are so different. Like, he walks slow. That bothers me. I wish he would pick it up.”
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THE WORD RETIREMENT? NOT A FAN
“I don’t like the word ‘retirement.’ Mr. B didn’t like it either. He always said retirement’s overrated. We get sold this whole image of retirement by these investment groups on TV and golf courses. Yea, I still have a vision for doing things in football and I’ll be honest with you, that might be coaching again at some point. I don’t think it’s this year, maybe in the future, but that’s not where my heart is right now. It’s not at all.”
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WHAT MOM & DAD WOULD'VE SAID
“They’d talk all the time about leaving a place maybe better than when you got there to begin with, and I think we’ve done that. And it’s not finished. We’ve got all these coaches that are sitting here with contracts and Mickey and the leadership in place to continue that, but yea, we’re not writing an obituary today. It’s a step, just another direction.”
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ALL-IN OR ALL-OUT
In fairness to Dennis who is a great candidate in the building or any other coach that possible could be hired. I think that there’s no half in in this game, you’re jumping in the deep end and you’re swimming. If you elect to stay out, that’s fine. I think that’s the approach that I think has to be taken.
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