DENVER — After the Buffalo Bills ended his second season leading the Denver Broncos with a 31-7 thrashing in the opening round of the NFL playoffs last year, doing so in an AFC wild-card game played in upstate New York, veteran head coach Sean Payton resolved to take the postseason party to the Mile High City with its thunderous, stadium-rattling crowd the next time around.
He knows the advantages of playing at home, particularly this time of year. The New Orleans Saints made regular trips to the playoffs under Payton’s guidance from 2006-21, with his fourth season yielding the franchise’s lone Super Bowl title. Those 2009 Saints were the NFC’s No. 1 seed, and after a first-round bye, they won back-to-back games at the Superdome before topping the Indianapolis Colts at Super Bowl XLIV in South Florida.
That was the second time New Orleans made the playoffs with Payton. The first time was in his debut season, and while the second-seeded Saints reached the NFC title game, they had to travel to Soldier Field to face the top-seeded Chicago Bears, who never trailed on the way to a 39-14 victory.
“We talk about earning seeds and trying to get all edges. It was the same way I felt in that first year in 2006 in New Orleans when we lost in Chicago in the championship game: ‘How do we get this game at home?'” Payton recalled.
In his third season in Denver — the Broncos went 8-9 in 2023, then 10-7 in the 2024 regular season before going 14-3 this season to win their first AFC South Division title since the 2015 season, which they capped with the franchise’s third Super Bowl title in their eighth and most recent appearance in the big game — Payton is trying to become the first head coach to win Lombardi Trophies with two franchises.