Saints’ petty Payton should give his criticism of officiating a rest
Saints head coach Sean Payton coached quarterbacks with the Eagles and the Cowboys and coordinated the offense for the Giants before evolving into his role with the Saints, who he led to their first-ever Super Bowl title in 2009.
Since the Super Bowl, Payton’s teams have made it out of the divisional round of the playoffs just once in 10 years (the NFL suspended him the entire 2012 season for Bountygate, the Saints found guilty of incentivizing dangerous hits on opposing players).
Lately Payton has established himself as the chief critic of NFL officials and officiating policies, not the cutting-edge coach whose ideas are copied throughout the league. Instead of embracing and playing through the rules, his agenda has been to change them to suit his tastes.
Payton’s latest assault is on the enforcement of taunting, which NFL coaches voted to tighten up over the offseason. On the Dan Patrick Show, Payton said the rule was being “over-officiated.”
That brought me back to the playoffs capping the 2018 season, when an official missed a pass interference call in the NFC title game that wound up helping the Los Angeles Rams reach the Super Bowl. Payton used his influence on the league’s Competition Committee to get pass interference a review-worthy call for the 2019 season.
The rules change was such a disaster that Payton could stomach it. His solution for fixing it was to have more officials be part of the review process. The owners got rid of it after one year.
So, here’s Payton, the onetime Newtown Square kid who grew into a champion head coach who then was kicked out
of the league for a year and later ruined a season with a ridiculous PI rule, now complaining about the enforcement of another rule. He defended it by saying the people who watch the games deserve better.
It’s the Saints who deserve better. They deserve more than an inveterate complainer who can’t get out of the second round of the playoffs, then deflects his inadequacies to the officiating.
If the speed limit is 35 mph, you accept the consequences for exceeding it, right? What good does it do to blame whoever gave you the ticket for “over-enforcing” the law?
Payton’s best days are behind him. He should be grateful he had Drew Brees for all but one of his 15 years coaching the Saints, rather than soil the game with his tired accusations about the officiating.
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Including Thursday when they intercepted Falcons quarterbacks four times en route to a victory, the Patriots are 172-18 (.905) when they have a positive turnover ratio in Bill Belichick’s tour as their head coach. That was the fifth straight victory for the Patriots after a disastrous 2-4 start.
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Matt LaFleur is 36-10 from 2019 until now as head coach of the Packers, the .783 winning percentage besting Belichick, the next closest active head coach. Belichick is 317-152, .676 with the Patriots and Browns.
Most of the LaFleur work has been done with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, the Packers going 34-7 (.921) with the veteran in the saddle.
Heck, Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy is among 11 active coaches with a winning percentage of 60 percent or better (148-97-2, .603) mainly because he coached Rodgers at Green Bay from 2006-18. Rodgers went 100-57-1 when McCarthy was the coach with the Packers from 2006 through all but four games of the 2018 season.
Payton is sixth among active head coaches with a record of 157-93 (.628) in 15 seasons with the Saints.
••• Comedian/actor Kevin Hart is slated to lead the crowd Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field in a rendition of “Fly Eagles Fly” pregame. The Philly product is scheduled to lead the “E-A-GL-E-S … Eagles” chant during a break in the first quarter between
the Eagles and Saints.
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Sean Landeta, who punted for the Eagles from 1999-2002, will serve Sunday as the Eagles Legends “Community Honorary Captain of the Game.”
Landeta, who punted for 22 seasons in the NFL and another three in the United States Football League, deserves to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Landeta punted through age 43, averaging 43.3 yards in a career spanning from 1985 to 2005 with the Giants, Rams, Buccaneers, Packers and Eagles.
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Speaking of punters, longtime NFL columnist and special teams ranking aficionado Rick
Gosselin praised the Packers for their “highly underrated” acquisition of cold weather punter Corey Bojorquez.
Bojorquez was with Buffalo for three seasons before joining the Rams as a free agent. He’s averaging 44.4 yards a punt this season, a yard better than the competition for the Packers, who entered Sunday with an 8-2 record tying them for league’s best record.
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Finally, this interesting note from TalkofFame.com: This is the first year since 2010 that every team in the league has multiple losses entering Week 11, yet another sign of the parity that exists throughout the league.