Sean Payton has shot down another of the many heat-seeking reports surrounding his 5-8 New Orleans Saints.
Weeks after dismissing whispers about his strained relationship with defensive coordinator Rob Ryan and refuting speculation over signing Ray Rice, Payton on Thursday laughed off a video from TheMMQB's Peter King suggesting that the coach might step down after this season.
"No way," Payton said, per The Times-Picayune. "You have to consider the source."
"This is his ninth year," King recently said on his website. "A lot of times a coach gets to be in his ninth, 10th, 11th year in a place and he starts to feel a little bit of wanderlust, he starts to feel, 'Are they still listening to my voice, are they still getting my message?' "
King noted that Payton's mentor, Bill Parcells, "always would leave a little bit earlier than later, and I wonder if Sean Payton is going to get that wanderlust to try to go somewhere at the end of this unsuccessful Saints season."
Payton called that thinking "silly."
Nick Underhill of The Advocate doesn't see a coach who has lost his team during this disappointing campaign. "If anything, players are often eager to relay the message they are being told that week or to cite a statistic Payton presented in a meeting," Underwhill wrote this week. "That doesn't sound like a coach who no longer has the ear of his team."
It's worth noting that Payton is signed through the 2017 season. We wouldn't be stunned to see him leave New Orleans long before that contract expires -- for just the reasons King noted -- but this year's underwhelming Saints still have a shot at the playoffs. It's worth seeing where this campaign goes first.
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