When Sean Payton announced that he was stepping down as the Saints’ head coach earlier this week, he said he did not plan on coaching during the 2022 season.
During a Thursday appearance on The Dan Patrick Show, Payton said that his comments didn’t stop some teams from working to find out how committed he was to that plan. He said that two teams have reached out through back channels to see if he would be interested in coming to coach for them, but he reiterated that he’s not looking to coach and said he’s interested in calls he’s gotten about moving into broadcasting.
“I’m not looking at that path right now,” Payton said, via Luke Johnson of NOLA.com. “I don’t think i’m finished coaching. But I was excited to get two or three calls from people in the television industry.”
The Cowboys have been linked with Payton, including the 2019 run at him that Mike Florio revealed this week, but Payton didn’t name the teams that made the backchannel requests.
Payton is still under contract to the Saints, so any inquiries from another team would have to go through them or they would constitute tampering under NFL rules. It doesn’t appear anyone has gone that route and that makes it all the likelier that Payton’s contributions to the coming NFL season will be as an analyst.