Sean Payton nearly went full Bob Knight — instead, he joined an elite list of coaches

Sean Payton joined a legendary list of football coaches after the Broncos comeback win, inspired in part by Bob Knight's famous move

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Nov 1, 2026, 6:21 PM

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DENVER , CO - NOVEMBER 1: Head coach Sean Payton of the Denver Broncos talks to down judge Andy War...

Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post

Sean Payton had a plan for his pregame speech Sunday. It involved a chair and one of the legendary coaches that came before him.

Before the Denver Broncos played the Kansas City Chiefs, Payton wrote a number on the grease board in the locker room: 48.

“It was 48 days since we played that Monday night game, and we were awful,” Payton said, referring to Kansas City’s 31-10 win in Week 1.

Next to the board was a padded folding chair.

“My plan was at some point during the pregame talk to pick that chair up and kind of Bob Knight it into the …” Payton said, borrowing from the former Indiana basketball coach, who famously threw a chair across the court during a 1985 game against Purdue. “Now there’s a problem. These fold-up chairs are much heavier. And so I did a test run and I kind of lift, and I’m like, well, the only thing I could throw then would be the hand sanitizer stand. I wasn’t going to do that.”

So the chair stayed where it was.

“No one knew what the chair was for,” Payton said. “I just got angry and shouted without the chair going.”

It worked anyway. The Broncos came back from a 24-13 deficit in the third quarter to beat the Chiefs 28-24 and move into first place in the AFC West.

Payton became the 19th coach in NFL history to coach 300 regular-season games. The win was also his 200th, counting the playoffs, which he reached in his 320th game. That makes him the sixth-fastest coach to 200 wins. The five ahead of him are Don Shula (286 games), George Halas (287), Curly Lambeau (300), Bill Belichick (307) and Paul Brown (309).

Payton got a game ball. Before the game, though, he skipped the chair and told his players about the years he spent away from the sideline.

The first was 2012, when the NFL suspended him for the full season over the Saints’ bounty scandal. The terms barred him from contact with his team.

“I was away in 2012. They tried to kill me,” Payton said he told the team. “Couldn’t talk to anyone. It was crazy. Couldn’t talk to anyone.”

The second was 2022. Payton stepped away from New Orleans after the 2021 season and spent a year working in television before Denver hired him.

“Every one of us at some point has to get off this thing, but you don’t want to,” Payton said. “And we’re all better having been on it than never at all. So I’ve been fortunate to have been a part of a lot of good players and a lot of good organizations.”

He got emotional talking about the milestone, and the finish made it more so.

“I’m screaming at Vance one second, and then I’m hugging Vance and shaking Andy’s hand,” Payton said, referring to defensive coordinator Vance Joseph and Chiefs coach Andy Reid. “There’s nothing like it.”

Payton said the win had more to do with his own team than with Kansas City.

“It had nothing to do with the Chiefs. It had everything to do about us,” he said. “When you have a game like that, you’re embarrassed. It feels rotten. And so you had to wait 48 days.”

He also explained what still drives him after 200 wins.

“I think the little bit of the curse is that I hate losing probably more than I like winning,” he said. “And so, this was a good win.”

The chair never moved. Asked whether the hand sanitizer stand would have worked as a backup, Payton thought about it.

“The hand sanitizer was going to be easy,” he said. “I just don’t know if that was going to be effective.”