terry bradshaw

Terry Bradshaw Reveals Why Sean Payton Took Denver Broncos Coaching Job

Terry Bradshaw dropped some details as to why the Broncos landed Sean Payton and the reason the coach turned down the Cardinals.

It all has to do with the quarterback situation with Arizona. According to Bradshaw, even though Payton didn’t like the Denver drama with Russell Wilson, it was better than the Kyler Murray situation with the Cardinals.

Tom Rock, a columnist for Newsday, shared the details he gleaned from Terry Bradshaw, who used to work with Sean Payton on-set at FOX.

Rock posted “sat with Terry Bradshaw for a bit. Interesting comments on Sean Payton, his co-worker for the past year at FOX. Said Payton didn’t want to go to Arizona (because) of the QB. Also said he didn’t want to go to Denver (because) of the QB! Ultimately he took that job in spite of Russ.”

Sean Payton probably was the hottest name among all the NFL coaching candidates. He did have his pick of jobs, talking to the likes of Arizona, Denver and Houston. However, there was one difficulty in hiring Payton. Whichever team landed the coach also needed to ship some coveted draft picks to the Saints. Payton retired from New Orleans a year ago. But the Saints still own his rights. Basically, a team that wanted to hire him needed to trade for him.

The Broncos agreed to terms with Payton last week and introduced him at a Monday press conference. Reporters asked him questions about Wilson, the former Seahawk who is going into his second season with the Broncos. Reports suggested that Wilson rankled his teammates when he brought his own people with him, including private QB coach Jake Heaps. Plus, Wilson had his own office at the Broncos complex and his own assigned parking spots.

When asked about Heaps, specifically, Payton replied: “That’s foreign to me — that’s not going to take place. I’m unfamiliar with it. Our staff will be here, our players will be here and that will be it.”

Bradshaw also shared something similar with Vic Lombardi with Altitude Sports Radio.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about what Terry Bradshaw said about Sean Payton and Arizona. Again, he repeated something similar to other reporters. Here’s the back story. The Cardinals fired Kliff Kingsbury last month after the season ended. Kingsbury bought a one-way ticket to Thailand.

But whomever coaches the Cardinals will inherit Kyler Murray, the one-time top pick of the draft.

“He didn’t want to work with that quarterback,” Terry Bradshaw said of Sean Payton’s opinion of Murray.

The Cardinals QB and Kingsbury didn’t get along at the end of Kingsbury’s tenure. The quarterback wanted to call his own running plays. However, Murray tore his ACL in December and it’s not clear when he’ll be ready to play this fall. And, Murray still has four years remaining on his lucrative contract. So any coach will be stuck with him, good or bad.

So from Terry Bradshaw’s view, he could understand why Sean Payton took the Broncos option. Payton thought Wilson was an easier problem to solve than Murray.