SonOfNOLA
VIP Contributor
Online
If the OP was more specific about what areas Payton may have held the team back from winning more beyond the wildcard & divisional rounds, then the answer would be yes with better context. Sean Payton brought more success to the franchise than the franchise has ever seen. But the areas that were overall neglected did prevent the team from having more postseason success that the team should have achieved had those areas been addressed.
It’s obvious Payton is the winningest regular season coach with multiple division titles during his last several years here. But what could have been if many of the 2016-2021 1st round picks were invested in offensive skill positions plus signing top tier FA starters and top FA depth on offense? That doesn’t make him a bad coach because of questioning if he held the team back. But he could have made his job a lot easier and been even more postseason successful had we not settle for low tier/older FA veterans and undrafted WR2/WR3/TE2/RB2 on offense as much as we did while Payton was HC. Coaching hid a lot of the undrafted players weaknesses with great QB and great playcalling during the regular season, but not investing in premium offensive skill players always showed during the postseason.
Teams we faced in the postseason seemed to have a 2nd RB, 2nd WR and 2nd TE that was nearly or equally talented as their main starter. We knew our elite RB1 and elite WR1 would miss multiple games a season due to injury and still never invested in an elite RB2 and elite WR2. Last season would have turned out a lot differently if we had those kind of players behind AK and MT when they missed games/the season.
It’s obvious Payton is the winningest regular season coach with multiple division titles during his last several years here. But what could have been if many of the 2016-2021 1st round picks were invested in offensive skill positions plus signing top tier FA starters and top FA depth on offense? That doesn’t make him a bad coach because of questioning if he held the team back. But he could have made his job a lot easier and been even more postseason successful had we not settle for low tier/older FA veterans and undrafted WR2/WR3/TE2/RB2 on offense as much as we did while Payton was HC. Coaching hid a lot of the undrafted players weaknesses with great QB and great playcalling during the regular season, but not investing in premium offensive skill players always showed during the postseason.
Teams we faced in the postseason seemed to have a 2nd RB, 2nd WR and 2nd TE that was nearly or equally talented as their main starter. We knew our elite RB1 and elite WR1 would miss multiple games a season due to injury and still never invested in an elite RB2 and elite WR2. Last season would have turned out a lot differently if we had those kind of players behind AK and MT when they missed games/the season.
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