Sean Payton spent fifteen seasons torturing the Falcons as the Saints’ head coach, going 22-9 against them, and last night gave him his first shot at doing it in a Broncos uniform. Denver beat Atlanta 27-7 in the preseason opener at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, already up 24-0 by halftime, which is exactly when 9News reporter Cynthia Frelund put a microphone in front of Payton and asked him about the game.
He didn’t talk about the score.
“A lot of people dressed up as empty seats today,” Payton told the broadcast, and I’ve watched that clip enough times now that I’m fairly sure it’s the funniest thing anyone says in the NFL all preseason.
That’s the whole article, honestly. A head coach on a live mic just compared an entire fanbase’s home opener to a Halloween party nobody showed up to. It’s mean. It’s funny. And given his history with this specific franchise, it’s not out of character at all — Payton’s history with the Falcons is a running bit at this point, one that’s been going for a decade and a half, and Atlanta fans knew exactly whose voice that was before the broadcast even cut back to him.
The score backed the joke up, too. Broncos blow out Falcons 27-7 behind Stidham and a pick-six: Jarrett Stidham ran Denver’s entire first-half offense with Bo Nix held out of the game altogether, going 9-of-15 for 131 yards and a touchdown to Jaleel McLaughlin, and defensive back Jahdae Barron turned a Cooper Rush throw into a 97-yard interception return for a score.
https://twitter.com/NFL/status/2088421559526449520
Atlanta’s only answer was a 1-yard touchdown run from undrafted rookie Jack Strand late in the third quarter, the kind of score that reads more like a mercy than a rally. Bijan Robinson, fresh off signing his record extension, was in uniform and didn’t play a snap. Neither did Drake London. Per ESPN, the Falcons finished with 192 total yards against a team that didn’t need its starting quarterback to win by three scores.
I’ll give you the complicating part, because pretending otherwise would be dishonest: it’s preseason. The Falcons are rebuilding, the actual roster wasn’t on the field for most of the night, and beating up a team’s twos and threes with your own backups isn’t exactly a controlled experiment.
None of that makes the joke worse.
Payton didn’t need the box score to have a point. He had fifteen years of history and a live mic, and he used both. I sent the clip to my sister, who’s spent four years at Rutgers perfecting the art of ending my takes with one word, and even she just sent back a laughing emoji.
Denver’s next up against whoever’s left on the preseason slate. Payton’s next up against anybody who still thinks a new uniform mellowed him out. Give the man a headset and a division he’s never faced before and watch what happens — I’ll be over here following the rest of preseason, waiting for the next team dumb enough to hand him a live mic.
