KING : Sean Payton at Home Sweet Home?

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Sean Payton at Home Sweet Home?

METAIRIE, La. — Not long after the sun rose over New Orleans one training-camp morning, Sean Payton was a realtor showing off the best property in his luxe inventory. His inventory: the massively refurbished Saints training facility. There’s the ice box in the end zone, a remade long trailer where 20 or so players at a time can get refreshed in 32-degree chill to escape the 98-degree heat-index temps outside. There’s the $3-million team meeting room with Saints-logoed plush chairs and a $600,000 video screen in front of the room, the screen Payton debuted at the start of camp with an electrifying snakes-chasing-iguanas BBC video.

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It’s the kind of jewel, and this is the kind of team, that I believe could make Payton a Saints lifer. Could, I mean. This is his 14th season in Louisiana (13, if you subtract the year he was suspended over Bountygate), and all along we’ve assumed one day Jerry Jones would come calling with a rich trade offer and silly money, and the Saints would let Payton walk. He’d be an attractive free-agent coach—he’s won 126 games in 13 years, and his offense has the kind of John Nash “Beautiful Mind” cutting-edge feel that owners love. And maybe one day Jones or someone entices him. But the way Payton showed off this place for us, with such pride and excitement, I started to think he could grow old here, and be very happy.

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We sit down in the team meeting room, which slopes up to the back so that everyone can see the speaker and video screen, and Payton cues up the BBC Planet Earth video of hatchling iguanas being born out of the earth, and the stunning chase scenes of snakes going after the hatchlings. That’ll get your heart beating. That was Payton’s idea. “I didn’t want the first video to be some NFL instructional video,” he said. This had another intention.

“Moral of the story?” Payton said. “You better hit the ground running here.”

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