Sean Payton Remains Insufferable

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The Minnesota Vikings have a history with Sean Payton, and his New Orleans Saints teams will forever represent some of the most disliked matchups in recent franchise history. On Thursday night during the first round of the NFL Draft, he couldn’t help but take credit with another smug grin at the expense of the franchise.

Sean Payton Remains Insufferable

Although Sean Payton is no longer with the New Orleans Saints, he remains the same person who was suspended for a season largely because of his character. Moving to the Denver Broncos, he immediately threw former coach Nathaniel Hackett under the bus and quickly struggled to gain any positive momentum with Russell Wilson.

sean payton
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Now employing a plethora of underperforming holdovers, including Zach Wilson, Jarrett Stidham, and Ben DiNucci, it stood to reason that Denver would draft a quarterback on Thursday night. With the New York Jets set to pick ahead of the Minnesota Vikings, they wouldn’t take a signal caller while employing a healthy Aaron Rodgers under center. They could trade the pick to the Broncos or Las Vegas Raiders, though, and then the Vikings would have none of the top prospects still available to them.

Ultimately, the Vikings opted to pay a small price to move up one spot and grab J.J. McCarthy. At the first opportunity presented to him, Payton took the chance to claim credit for that decision.

The Broncos had been heavily linked to Oregon’s Bo Nix throughout this draft cycle, and that’s where the former Ducks quarterback wound up. Payton will now have one of the most decorated college athletes to ever play football step into the locker room and fight for the top quarterback spot.

always sean
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Minnesota had not been tied to Nix very often on mock drafts or through reports, and had the Broncos taken McCarthy in a trade, they would have had an interesting decision to make. No matter how it played out or who wants to grab credit, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah has to feel good getting a solid quarterback option at 10th overall and grabbing arguably the best defensive player in the draft at 17th.


Ted Schwerzler is a blogger from the Twin Cities that is focused on all things Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. He’s active on Twitter and writes weekly for Twins Daily. As a former college athlete and avid sports fan, covering our pro teams with a passion has always seemed like such a natural outlet.