PAYTON COUGHED UP SOME CASH TO GET WILLIAMS

In a move that could start a new trend in NFL head-coaching circles, Saints coach Sean Payton reportedly has given up $250,000 in 2009 salary in order to help his team land defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. According to Jay Glazer of FOX, Payton sweetened the pot for Williams by offering to sacrifice a quarter-million bucks. The move meshes with rumors we’d heard that Williams received an offer from the Packers and shopped it back to the Saints. But what does this say about the Saints that, to get the guy they wanted, it wasn’t ownership that coughed up the extra cash but the head coach? We know what it says about Payton: He knows his butt is on the hot seat in 2009. Payton’s smart enough to see the parallels between himself and Eric Mangini, the former Jets coach. Both men took their teams to the playoffs in their first seasons as head coaches. Both men had disappointing sophomore seasons. Both franchises spent a bunch of money (and, for the Saints, draft picks) in an effort to become highly competitive in 2008. And both efforts failed. Apart from the apparent fact that Payton already is feeling the heat, his willingness to give up some of his money creates a new front in the process of negotiating coaching contracts. Owners, who didn’t become filthy rich by being stupid, can try to squeeze head coaches into reducing their own deals if said head coaches are perceived to be overly anxious to hire a given assistant coach. So when Payton senses at the Senior Bowl, the Scouting Combine, and the league meetings that he’s getting the cold shoulder, he need not check his armpits (or any other region of his body) for objectionable odor. He has now made the lives of the other NFL head coaches a bit more complex by giving every owner a new weapon for holding down costs, and the other NFL head coaches surely won’t be happy about it.