Sean Payton had one of the most delightfully insane ideas in recent NFL history, and we almost got to watch it happen.
According to a new report from Seth Wickersham of ESPN, when Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots parted ways in 2024, Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton seriously considered a plan to bring Belichick to Denver. Not as a consultant. Not as an assistant. As the head coach.
And Payton would have demoted himself.
The proposal, as Wickersham lays it out, was this: Payton would step aside from the head coaching chair and take on an offensive assistant role. Belichick would come in as head coach and grind out the 15 wins he needed to pass Don Shula for the all-time NFL wins record. Once Belichick hit that milestone, presumably the arrangement would end and Payton would slide back into his old office.
Belichick sat at 333 career wins between the regular season and playoffs when he left New England. Shula finished at 347. The math was tight but achievable, especially with a Denver roster Payton was already building into a contender.
Payton reportedly considered pitching the whole thing to owner Greg Penner but eventually walked it back as too complicated. Probably the right call. Also, what a fantasy to sit with for a minute.
Because here is the thing. It might have actually worked.
The Broncos went 14-3 last season and won a playoff game before bowing out. That is 15 wins right there, exactly the number Belichick needed. If the plan had been in motion, Belichick would be a hoodie-clad footnote in Denver history, holding the all-time wins record, riding off into whatever comes next for him.
The absurdity of a Super Bowl winning coach voluntarily demoting himself to help another Super Bowl winning coach chase a record is peak football brain. Payton is not lacking in ego. Neither is Belichick. The idea that both men would have agreed to this arrangement, even temporarily, requires a level of shared coaching respect that basically does not exist in modern sports.
But that respect is real. Payton has said for years that Belichick is the greatest coach of his generation. Belichick has always spoken about Payton with quiet regard. The two are cut from similar cloth: obsessive game planners, culture builders, guys who see football at a different resolution than everyone else in the room.
Under this plan, Denver becomes the coolest coaching lab in football. Belichick handles the defense and the overall program. Payton runs the offense in a support role. Bo Nix gets the benefit of two of the sharpest offensive and defensive minds in the sport working on his development. The Broncos become an instant contender with an even higher ceiling than they already had.
The downside is obvious. Who is actually in charge? Whose voice wins in the room during a two-minute drill? What happens when the two coaches disagree on a scheme decision? Coaching structures fail all the time with far less ego than this arrangement would have involved.
Still, the fact that Payton even considered it says everything about how he views the game. He was willing to swallow his pride, at least temporarily, to help a peer he admires reach a record that will probably never be broken again once it is set.
Belichick, meanwhile, ended up taking the North Carolina job. That story is going in a different direction entirely.
The Denver plan is now filed away as one of the great what-ifs of the 2024 offseason. Absurd on paper. Kind of brilliant in practice. And exactly the type of scheme that only a coach like Sean Payton would even dream up.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
