N/S Payton critiques old Broncos staff, says Jets are setting themselves up for a hard fall, etc.

To me this a measured, fair take. I don't think SP ever planned to stick around for a rebuild after Drew retired. All indications were that he was going to ride the Drew bus for as long as he could and then bail out. Looking back it was pretty obvious. There was never a plan for life after Brees. He knew he wasn't going to be around to clean up the mess so he traded draft picks for new toys and helped nuke the salary cap. He ran up the credit card and then left town.

It's not so much that he left, it's how he left. I totally understand an older coach not wanting to waste years of his his career trying to rebuild without quality draft assets and a less than ideal cap situation. Rebuilds are hard enough already but then you throw in the fact that he didn't have much to rebuild with, I don't blame him for leaving. But there's a right way to go about it. He tried to snake his way to Miami and got busted. So then it turns into burnout. He didn't even try to hide the fact that he would be back to coach another team as soon as possible.

Then he comes back and basks in the spotlight with the world waiting for him to pick which team he would coach next. To his surprise the Chargers weren't interested and the teams that were interested were awful. After milking all of the attention he could he finally settled on the Broncos and he's been running his mouth ever since. For the life of me I can't understand why Saints fans are rooting for him and the Broncos. Obviously I appreciate what he did for the Saints and I'm sure in time my feelings toward SP will change. But right now I'm not rooting for him and I'm certainly not yelling, "Let's Ride!".

I disagree with the idea that Payton wasn't planning on staying after Brees retired, the Loomis interview after Brees retired is very telling when you look at it now with Payton's "sabbatical" added in.

This is a summary of what Loomis said:

- At the end of the 2016 season, Brees told Loomis and Payton he was planning on retiring soon and they needed to find his replacement.

- Loomis, Payton, and Ireland scout, do homework, and consider Mahomes to be their guy, which was absolutely the correct assessment.

- Loomis said that he and Payton also talked with Brees about drafting Mahomes and that Brees was 100% on board with it, with the succession plan being to retire after 2017 or 2018 at the latest.

What Loomis didn't go into detail of was just how badly the Saints plan went down in flames when Kansas City jumped in front to draft Mahomes. I think if the Saints had drafted Mahomes, Payton is still here and he's not looking for an out.