After the Denver Broncos held a rookie minicamp practice session last Saturday, Sean Payton was asked if he feels settled in as head coach.
“I think so,” Payton said. “We get so busy with routine, the thing with our league is it’s so seasonal. The season ends and you go right into free agency. Then from free agency, you go right into the combine and draft. It feels like — we just finished up with the draft. Obviously, there were a lot of meetings and a lot of film.
“You get into different portions of the season, and now we’re into kind of spring training if it was baseball. I have a house, a car; I know how to get home now, and you’re getting into the routine. But there’s always that checklist of things that — eventually, you have to leave at night because you’re not going to be able to get to everything.”
Payton went on to praise the team’s staff and noted that while he has still mixed up some names (such as calling Broncos equipment Chris Valenti ‘Bum,’ which is the nickname for Saints equipment manager John Baumgartner), he’s getting a feel for things and appreciates the work that’s been done this offseason.
“Everybody [is] working to put this together,” Payton said. “There are little things that come up that you tweak or correct. The fields are in great shape and the facility setup is fantastic. I can only reference — again, I go back to that first exposure as a young coach in 2006 post-Katrina. That was a much different situation going into a team that had so much happen to them the year before. This is different. But yeah, I think I’m getting settled in.”
Payton bought a Denver-area home for $4.5 million in March, and he has his first free agency period, NFL draft and practice with the Broncos under his belt. We’re getting into the swing of the Sean Payton era now.
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