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Sean Payton meeting with Amazon again this week

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Rams coach Sean McVay will stay with the reigning Super Bowl champs for the 2022 NFL season, turning his back on the tantalizing, high-paying world of TV broadcasting.

Fox isn’t the only network taking a close look at former Saints coach Sean Payton. Amazon is in play, too.

Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Payton will be meeting with Amazon this week regarding potential employment with the company that will commence broadcasting Thursday Night Football this year.

It’s the second meeting for Amazon and Payton, and it happens as Amazon looks for a Plan B to Troy Aikman, who opted to join ESPN instead.

Payton is being considered by Fox both for studio work and for game broadcasts. He has no specific preference between the two. The jobs, however, are very different.

Broadcasting games currently pays better. Much better, for some. And if Payton were to become the No. 1 analyst at Fox or the lone Amazon color commentator, he’d possibly make as much or more than his coaching salary, which is believed to have been at or above $15 million per year.

There’s another factor to be considered when choosing between Fox and Amazon. As an over-the-air broadcast network, Fox has a much greater footprint. For Amazon, no one knows how many people will be tuning in for the games, which will be televised via a local broadcast affiliate in the markets of the teams that are playing, but that otherwise will be available only via streaming on Amazon Prime.

One of the hesitations when it comes to Payton is the possibility that he’ll return to coaching in a year or two. That’s hardly automatic. If the money is right, he may realize that life is a lot easier as a broadcaster than as a head coach who is obsessed with every detail of the game and, in turn, spends way too much time working.