Dan Campbell is a unique coach, but the fingerprints of his longtime mentor, Sean Payton, are readily apparent. Campbell spent several years as both a player and a coach under Payton’s watchful eye in New Orleans with the Saints.
Now that Payton has stepped away from coaching, Campbell was liberated to talk about how much influence he took from his longtime boss.
“Sean was my mentor, man,” Campbell told the Detroit media on Wednesday. “I think the world of him. I learned more under Sean than any other head coach in my time as a player. I was with him for eight of my 11 years as a player under him, and then to coach under him for five years. I got both facets of it, as a player and a coach. And so really everything that I am, or what I’m about, or how I think, really does come from him in a sense.”
