Other than his passive-aggressive T-shirt that he wore-but-sort-of-covered-up, Sean Payton was mostly calm during his press conference Wednesday.
But the Saints coach was also firm that there was plenty of work to be done in his other role, as a member of the competition committee.
“I like the fact that I’m part of that committee and I know every offseason, the members of that committee, we all sit down and really try to grind on, ‘Hey, how to make this game better, safer.’ Then present it to ownership and the other coaches,” Payton said, via Christopher Dabe of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. This year will be no different. Certainly there’ll be topics like that that are brought up.”
Yeah, maybe like that one play, when a team was jobbed out of a trip to the Super Bowl by an obviously missed pass interference/helmet-to-helmet hit.
But Payton also mentioned this year’s kickoff changes, and cited the 1978 Raiders “Holy Roller” play, which led to a rules change as well.
“I think that it’s very common in our league for certain events to take place and then, man, there’s a reaction in the offseason,” Payton said.
He was short on specifics but said he very much looked forward to the discussion.
“I think as we get closer, talking to your peers and your fellow coaches and people in the business, there are a lot of great ideas,” he said. “You take what happened in the kickoff and how we took the special teams coaches, we took a lot of people that were experts in that area and sat them down and I think they came up with some real good solutions this (past) offseason. . . .
“This specifically, really, pertains to timing, timing of games and how much can be reviewed. That’s a little bit more challenging.”
One senses it’s a challenge he’s up for.
