Girod Street End Zone

The Goat
GSEZ Founder

News flash:  Sean Payton buys a house in Dallas.

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/cowboys/post/_/id/4678080

Ignore anything else you may read, other than the seven points below.

1.  Demon analysis; sort of inevitable.  First, Sean Payton is not Satan.  A few of the middle-American types that come to N.O. get hooked, like maybe Hank Stram, or Drew Brees.  Not many.  Sean Payton is not one of them.  He came here for the professional and personal challenge, and it went great for a few years under pretty hideous conditions.  But like a lot of folks in America, his ideal is a gated community in one of the biggest markets in the country. I say this with neither praise nor criticism — he probably fits in better in a sunbelt megaplex than in New Orleans.  It’s just who he is.  Honestly, part of what is moving him to Dallas is the same part of his personality that had no patience for some of organization’s past failures that he helped to transcend, so net-net, I can’t say we got a bad deal here.

There was no way he was ever going to spend the vast bulk of his career coaching in New Orleans.  If you step back for just a second, it seems obvious.  Having done almost the impossible for the Saints, he wants even bigger challenges with even bigger name teams.

And stop blaming his wife.  She may well have wanted to move to Dallas, but she’s a coach’s wife who’s started out in far worse places under far worse conditions.  No coach’s wife makes him leave an optimum situation for winning world championships at or just before the height of his career.

2.  Don’t discount the Cowboys factor.  All this “he wouldn’t like Dallas because Jerry Jones has too much control” is just just wishful thinking. 

Jerry Jones isn’t a jerk to the guys that work for him.  He is (by NFL owner standards) a first-class visionary, and a reasonably decent human being.  As far as relationships with coaches, he was supportive of Parcells, and of Wade Phillips, in the latter case beyond my comprehension.  And as far as the who’s-the-GM thing, they had enough talent to win 13 games in 2007 and 11 in 2009, in each case under lifetime underachievement award winner Phillips. 

Let me ask you, how good would our talent, from Loomis and the scouting staff, have been under Phillips?  Swap the two coaches.  Who’s going to the Super Bowl, and who’s losing in the first round of the playoffs?

Finally, Payton has a terrific personal relationship with Jones, they probably both thought they’d work together one day, and they both figure that the Lombardi paid any debt either one owes New Orleans.  Payton would kill for the Cowboys job, and will be watching Jason Garrett with mixed emotions next year — on the one hand, he’ll be pulling for him to lose, but on the other hand, he’ll be hoping that he doesn’t succeed.

3.  Much, much smarter than quitting.  Nobody plans ahead like Sean Payton.  If he gives it a year or two, and it just doesn’t work out (and it won’t), he can graciously quit for a year or two and do ESPN, for which he would be terrific, and accomplish the whole thing without damaging his brand.  By 2014, his daughter’s finishing high school and his son’s about a sophomore, so he can move again if the Cowboys gig isn’t available yet.   In 2017, his son heads to college, he’s only in his early 50s and can probably name his price. 

If the Cowboys job opens up in the meantime, it’s his, and if not he’s got two exit points. 

Meanwhile, people have time to adjust to the idea of his leaving the Saints, he doesn’t look like such a bad guy.  And don’t overestimate how people outside the market will feel — at least half, likely more, will say, “hey, he got them a Super Bowl, who blames him if he wants to leave that weird place?”

He’s also smart enough to tee it up if things start heading south.  I’m also confident he’s had more than one conversation with John Fox about job transition issues, and how much it sucks to be a lame duck.  He’s setting up a graceful departure when he’s at the top of the market.  Got to give him credit.

4.  I give it a year, maybe two.  On the other hand, we all already know his head’s halfway out the door.  This is incredibly damaging to the integrity of the organization, in this sense:  in the NFL, everything is demanded from everyone all the time.  And the most important guy in your football organization has, in a small but very meaningful way, shown that on the other hand, he’s not all-in.   

It would be one thing if he was buying a house in his home town, or in Orlando or some other place where you buy a house in the Sunbelt.  But he bought it in Dallas.  Nobody will say anything, but everybody knows.   Please spare me the “Tony Dungy commuted back to Tampa” and “Doc Rivers lives in Orlando but coaches the Celtics” comparisons, because they’re not…..comparable.  In any meaningful way.

Because it’s the NFL, and not college, when you win in a smaller market (conference), you can’t just go to Dallas (Michigan/Notre Dame/LSU), because the rules are a little different.  But this is nothing more than a prelude to the NFL’s version of Urban Meyer winning big in Utah and cashing in at Florida.

5.  Don’t tell me this doesn’t explain a lot about Gregg Williams’s apparent patience.  Williams has made no bones about wanting to be a head coach again, even while passing on the two recent interview opportunities with plausible half-denials.  I would find it hard to believe, at this point, that there haven’t been conversations between Payton and Williams about a succession plan.  If Payton has only half the character he appears to demonstrate, he may already have worked it out with Loomis.  We’ll have to wait and see.

6.  Drew Brees can’t be super-happy.  It’s a QB-coach match made in heaven.  Brees went all in.  Payton did not.  They’re all pros, and all big boys, but doing this before they got a second ring, well, there’s a little bond broken there. 

7.  I hope you enjoyed 2009.  Unless Gregg Williams is a lot better head coach than I think he is, we’re one-and-done in the Lombardi department.  The margin for error, as we saw this year, is so small in this league.  It takes a huge effort to pull a good/great team together, and almost nothing to throw it off-kilter at any moment.  I just don’t see how this works. 

I am not mad at Payton.   Not now, and not when he leaves.  He’s just done too, too much for us when we needed it most.

But just as he is entitled to do what he thinks is best for himself, within bounds of decency, manners and good taste, none of which he’s crossed here, we’re just as entitled to be very, very disappointed.  We got to watch other teams feast and feast and feast for years, and just when it seemed like we’d have “Our Time,” hey, I just felt that rug pulling out from under me.  

I guess my overall emotion is that it’s like the lite-beer version of worrying about the team leaving for a bigger market; you feel the inexorable pull of gravity, and you can’t help but feel a little frustrated that in the end, all for us is always Ragnarok, or gotterdamerung, if you will,  and the end of the world, no matter how hard Thor swings the hammer.  Nothing lasts forever, and in our case it seems like forever lasts even a little less than other places.  (Unless, of course, your property is under five feet of water.  Then, you get all the forever you want.)

Damn, just damn.  Pace, Coach, and god speed.  I wish I had better news, but I don’t.  All I have is the energy for one more capitalized

WHO DAT.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2011 at 4:06 pm and is filed under The New Orleans Saints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.