Is Payton worth the high pick?

Broncos are banking that new coach merits his first-round price

Could Sean Payton be the next big thing in the NFL?

Not in the traditional manner, mind you. He’s already established himself as one of the game’s most successful coaches by winning 152 regular-season games, nine playoff games and a Super Bowl over 15 years as New Orleans’ head coach.

Instead, what if doing what Denver did to acquire Payton — trading the Saints a first-round pick and swapping future draft assets — became more common in the future?

Certainly, trading for a head coach is not the norm currently in football. In fact, Payton was just the seventh head coach traded in the past 50 years and the third involving a first-round pick.

Former Atlanta Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff, now with the analytics firm Sumer Sports, said on a podcast recently he thinks he’d give the thought more consideration in the future if he ever returned to a front office.

“Categorically yes. Hell yes I would,” he said. “… Only on the opposite end of all this, meaning after I got fired, did I really start considering the opportunity to look into something like this. It’s a big-time move.

“It takes a lot to consider something like that.”

So, let’s consider it.

Sumer Sports’ Eric Eager pegs the average surplus value of the No. 1 overall pick at about $66 million over a four-year rookie contract and the No. 29 pick, which Denver traded to New Orleans for Payton, at $55 million.

Valuing coaching is a realm front offices and analytics people are continuing to develop, but one area where data allows for grading is in decision-making — fourth downs, timeout usage, etc.

“So (Philadelphia head coach) Nick Sirianni has added .8 wins to his team this year just on decision-making,” Eager said. “That number is pretty stable year to year, but you might assume this year is a little bit of an outlier year. Maybe he’s worth .6 wins above the average head coach. Then all the other stuff, game prep, you’re picking up nickels on the ground rather than dollar bills, but let’s say it’s worth about the same as decision-making.

“So maybe the best coach in the NFL, you can handicap them as worth about 1.25 wins (above average) over a season.”

Extrapolate that out over a four-year rookie contract, and the best head coach in the game is worth five wins over the average head coach. Analysts calculate the average cost per win to