Broncos see Playoff Payton as nothing different than usual

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Adam Trautman knows what playoff Sean Payton looks like.

And in his eyes, it looks a lot like the Payton he sees week in and week out.

“I think his approach is the same,” Trautman said. “He’s obviously being super detailed this week with everything, but that’s also usual. So, we’re not seeing anything different necessarily from that standpoint. But obviously, we know the importance of this game.”

Payton noted Friday that he was still in the office at 2 a.m. the previous night — and that such hours were part of what he missed about coaching when he spent the 2022 season away from the sideline and in the NFL on FOX broadcast studio. But that’s not atypical for him throughout the season.

Perhaps that’s the thing that defines Payton’s approach the most this week: How much it’s like other weeks. It’s not that Sunday’s game isn’t at a higher level. He knows that. His team knows that, too — even though it’s filled with young players who are going to get their first taste of what success in the postseason requires.

Indeed, {layoff Payton looks the same.

But Payton’s team is a smidgen different than the ones he took to the postseason while with the Saints.

Trautman was a part of the coach’s final playoff trip in New Orleans — the ninth since his arrival there in 2006, or four more than the Saints had in their first 39 campaigns before he became their head coach. The Saints advanced as far as the divisional round in that 2020 postseason, defeating Chicago before falling to eventual champions Tampa Bay.

“I think it was different in a way, just because you had certain guys, like, obviously, like I was with Drew [Brees] the last year, guys who are super veterans were very young, but that’s also a difference,” Trautman said. “We’re young and hungry versus being, like the old stoic have-been-here-before [team].”

 

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The team is “young and hungry,” but Payton’s experience has helped underscore his overarching message: It’s not good enough just to get there.

“It also helps when your head coach has been there a lot of times and he comes in and it’s not like a a new head coach who’s like, ‘Oh, guys, like, we’re in the playoffs. Like, this is great,'” Trautman said. “It’s like, ‘No, we’re in the playoffs and we’re here to win. Like, we plan on going to the next week and the next week and the next week and staying alive.”

“It’s not, ‘We’re satisfied with being here.'”