LONDON — It exists as one line of Sean Payton’s football resumé, a list that includes 173 regular-season wins as an NFL coach, a Super Bowl victory and several record-setting seasons on offense. But Payton the coach was once Payton the aspiring player — an Illinois Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
In 1988, he spent a six-month stint in England as a quarterback clinging to a last chance to play the game that has since become his livelihood. Payton is making his third trip to England as a head coach — this time with the Denver Broncos, who face the New York Jets Sunday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) — but he was once behind center for the Leicester Panthers.
“I was 23 years old,” Payton said. “Right out of college and basically playing for pizza, because you enjoyed it. It was a good six months.”
Leicester is a city of roughly 370,000 in the East Midlands section of England, roughly 103 miles northwest of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Its sporting pinnacle was Leicester City F.C.’s run to the 2015-16 Premier League title after facing £5,000-1 preseason odds.
In 1988, the Leicester Panthers were a part of what was called the Budweiser National League (the league is now called the British American Football Association). After Payton’s playing career at Eastern Illinois had ended, in which he threw for more than 10,000 yards, he had played for two Arena Football League teams, the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League and briefly as a replacement player for the Chicago Bears during the 1987 NFL players strike.
And he wondered what might be next.
“I’d been in the Arena league, I’d been up in the CFL … just finished playing during that [NFL] strike season and was getting ready to kind of get into coaching,” Payton said. “Then the owner of the [Leicester Panthers] had reached out, Barry Wardle. … I can remember my mother saying, ‘All of your friends are getting married, and they have health insurance, and what are you doing?'”
At that time, each team in the BAFA — which has American football teams for adults and youth players throughout Great Britain — was allowed to sign a maximum of four U.S.-born players. Payton, who still wanted to play despite having recently been released from the CFL, took a chance on a team he didn’t know existed in a city he had to look up on a map.
Payton said he basically served as a player-coach for the Panthers, due to his extensive game experience in comparison to his teammates and the fact that he played QB. That meant he and the other U.S.-born players had to create practice plans for teammates who often squeezed evening practices and weekend games around their day jobs.
“Practice would be 5:30ish, so when everyone was finished working, we’d go for a couple hours,” Payton said. “For them, it was the love of the game, and the four [American-born players] lived in a house. We’d go work out in the mornings, play some golf, put practice plans together. … They had all sorts of jobs, I’m telling you, from bouncers to construction.”
Most of the current Broncos were not aware of Payton’s late-1980s European junket. Asked about it this week as the Broncos wrapped up practice at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, edge rusher Jonathon Cooper could only raise an eyebrow.
“No, I didn’t know that,” Cooper said. “But that’s why he likes it out here so much, he’s enjoying himself.”
“He’s talked about his past football experience,” Broncos wide receiver Courtland Sutton added. “The biggest thing is that he’s always saying he’s been cut before. … He does like to tell us that he’s played before … but I think he likes talking about his coaching experience more than his playing experience. [But] it’s cool that he played here, shoot, in the 80s.”
At the end of the 1988 regular season, Payton finally faced the fork in his career road. He had tried to pursue potential openings to be a graduate assistant for a college team while in England, and San Diego State returned his call.
But Payton has said the offer came with one requirement — he had to be in San Diego in three days. So, after a transatlantic flight to Chicago and one car repair in Denver, Payton began his coaching career with the Aztecs.
“It’s easiest to say you want to play until everyone tells you to go home,” Payton said. “So, I got to that point where everyone told you to go home and then it’s like, ‘Well I don’t want to leave [the game]. What else can I do?’ My dad worked in a suit every day, got dressed, took a bus to a train, train to the city, and I knew I didn’t want to do that.”
After Wednesday’s practice, Payton said he hoped some of his former Leicester teammates would be able to attend Friday’s Broncos practice. Four of them did, and the Broncos also hosted the Panthers’ under-17 team as well.
“There weren’t many Americans [in 1988],” Payton said. “We were treated great … I think [I have] a jersey somewhere, pictures. But more importantly, again, not the physical, it’s all the memories. That’s the thing that was the best part of it.”