Sean Payton ranked 5th in NFL Best Coaches list per Rotoworld

quote:

---

5. Sean Payton
Career Record: 80-48 (.625)
With The Saints Since: 2006
Last Year’s Ranking: 4

Saints football is Sean Payton. Few coaches in the history of the league have made a bigger impact on their franchise. The former “Aints” have gone from annual also rans to perennial contenders, and they’ve done it on Payton’s watch. If there’s a problem, it’s that Payton can forget to set said watch. Nevermind Bountygate, a reckless, dangerous scandal that cost Payton all of 2012 — a season where his leaderless team went 7-9 and fielded the worst defense the NFL has ever seen. How about 2014, a year that was a cakewalk on paper, but Chinese water torture in practice. Playing in football’s most winnable division, the Saints turned in one disappointing performance after another, limping to a 7-9 record only made possible by the Bucs flagrantly tanking in Week 17. The sub-.500 campaign was just the second in Payton’s eight years in New Orleans, but an uninspired, undisciplined mess where Payton was rarely on the same page with DC Rob Ryan. From Bountygate on, lack of discipline has become a theme for Payton’s teams. Payton has earned enough benefit of the doubt to last a lifetime in the Crescent City, but he’s now had to tap into it two times in three years. Three in four will have people asking questions that seemed unthinkable in 2011.

---