Hours before they stood on opposite sidelines for a preseason game, Sean Payton and Kellen Moore greeted each other and took a few minutes to chat. Their conversation centered on the trade they had made days earlier, when Payton’s Denver Broncos sent wide receiver Devaughn Vele to Moore’s New Orleans Saints.
But the meeting was also a glimpse into the Saints’ past and present.
Inside the Caesar Superdome, where the men stood, no coach has delivered more victories — more hope — to the city of New Orleans than Payton, the former Saints coach whose reign lasted 15 years. And then there’s Moore — the Saints’ newest coach tasked with reviving the franchise coming off its worst season since 2005, the year before Payton’s arrival.
The parallels between the two are unavoidable.
Moore, like Payton when the Saints hired him, is a first-time head coach known for his offensive intellect. Moore, like Payton, worked as an offensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys, though in Moore’s case, that was his first play-calling gig before stops with the Los Angeles Chargers and Philadelphia Eagles. And Moore, like Payton then, is young — but still old enough to have been in the mix for head coaching jobs before landing the Saints.
Moore started hearing the comparisons well before the Saints hired him — and the 37-year-old even joked that general manager Mickey Loomis “might have a type” at his introductory press conference, given the executive hired Payton, too.
They continue to loom into Moore’s first season, which begins Sunday when the Saints host the Arizona Cardinals at noon.
But is Kellen Moore the next Sean Payton?
He doesn’t have to be.
“You have to be your authentic self,” Moore told the Times-Picayune. “If I become some raging screamer, the guys are going to look at me like I’m an idiot.”
Searching for Sean?
Sitting in his office, Loomis let out a small laugh after he answered the question posed to him: Does he have a type?
The general manager said he doesn’t know. What he does know, however, is that he didn’t go into the Saints’ coaching vacancy with the intention of finding a Payton clone. He noted he interviewed offensive and defensive coaches. Loomis said he found the pool of candidates to be the strongest of the three coaching searches that he’s conducted.
But Loomis didn't shoot down the similarities.
He said there are “natural comparisons” between Moore and Payton, from their coaching backgrounds to their days as college quarterbacks. Loomis said there’s a lot of overlap in the things that they talk about, as well. He said he even thinks the two look “a little bit alike.”
“Look, Sean’s the standard for the Saints,” Loomis said. “... So everyone, no matter who it is, is going to be compared to him. It’s not a bad thing.”
Dennis Allen, Moore’s predecessor, could attest to those comparisons. The Saints promoted Allen from defensive coordinator to head coach after Payton’s resignation in 2021 in an attempt to maintain continuity, but he was unpopular with the team’s fanbase and fired midway through his third season. Darren Rizzi, who took over as an interim, wasn’t seen as much of a direct link to Payton, but he still was part of the previous staff.
The Saints’ lack of success in recent years is why many wondered if Loomis needed to completely move on from the Payton era for the franchise to have a fresh start this offseason.
But this narrative always seemed to baffle Loomis. Didn’t the Broncos and the Detroit Lions launch two of the more successful rebuilds of late? Each of those franchises held ties to Payton or his assistants, he pointed out at the end of the season.
Loomis said he’d be concerned only with finding the best candidate for the job.
“You could do a lot worse than trying to emulate Sean Payton,” ESPN analyst Louis Riddick said. “The NFL truly is a copycat league. … I wouldn’t blame Mickey for leaning into the similarities, if that’s what he did.”
Still, there are plenty of differences between the two — especially in their personalities. Payton is a Bill Parcells disciple and had the fiery persona to match. Moore is more even-keeled, stemming the influence of watching his dad coach high school football in their small hometown of Prosser, Washington.
The situations the men stepped into aren’t nearly the same, either. Payton was tasked with taking over a franchise whose city had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but he had at least successfully recruited Drew Brees to be the team’s starting quarterback. Moore, on the other hand, has a far less definitive answer at the position: Second-year signal-caller Spencer Rattler beat out rookie Tyler Shough to start the season.
Loomis was drawn to Moore nonetheless. During the interview process, the general manager was struck by Moore’s intentionality. Every answer, Loomis recalled, had a well-layered reason behind it. The answers felt genuine, no matter the topic.
The Saints, for instance, held part of training camp in California because Moore brought up the idea as a way of building chemistry over the course of a long season, Loomis said. Moore also brought up the ways he’d go on to incorporate team-bonding activities, such as the team’s afternoon at a paintball course.
“Here’s what I like about him: He’s open-minded,” Loomis said. “He’s not looking for — and Sean’s the same way — he’s not a guy who thinks he has every answer, particularly early on. He likes having opinions and likes dissent. We grow from that.”
Creating a culture
Charlie Smyth knew to keep it brief this time.
After an August practice in which the kicker nailed a 58-yarder to win the simulated game, Moore told the Ireland native to break down the team’s huddle. It was only the second time Smyth, who didn’t start playing football until August 2023, had ever been given such a task — and he caught flak for his first speech.
“I remember I did one at the (International Player Pathway program) … and the boys were like, ‘Is this a novel or whatever?’” Smyth said.
Smyth appreciated Moore's invitation, which extended beyond a single practice kick. To Moore, it was a small way to praise the second-year kicker’s progress after an admittedly rough start to training camp.
“I think it really is a cool example of development in our league,” Moore said. “Charlie, he’ll be probably the first one to tell you that the start of training camp wasn’t great. He was missing more than he made for a couple days, and he just kept going for it.”
This, to Moore, is culture.
The 37-year-old is not the kind of football coach who stands at a lectern, pounds his fist and goes on and on about the importance of culture. Moore, like Loomis, views the term as a misnomer. Culture is the result of creating an environment that allows every player, every coach to be their best, he said. That still matters to him, of course, but that differs from a team’s core values.
The approach is also why Moore wasn’t determined to make changes for the sake of change.
Moore said he wanted to understand what the Saints already had in place, adding he recognized there was a “lot of good here.” He opted, for example, to keep some of the key messaging from the Payton era — including the “Compete Street” signs installed in 2015 at the team’s practice facility.
“We’re going to lean into competition, because that’s part of the NFL,” Saints director of sports science Ted Rath said. “You have to compete now. We can do it in a healthy manner. … We’re going to build upon those things and continue to keep that competitive edge.”
Instead, Moore has focused on blending all parts of his background to put his imprint on the Saints.
His assistants can recognize the influences. Rath said the flow of the Saints’ schedule — aimed at optimizing efficiency — can be traced back to Jim Caldwell’s days in Detroit, when Rath was an assistant strength and conditioning coach and Moore was a backup quarterback.
Defensive coordinator Brandon Staley, once Moore’s boss as coach of the Chargers, ran the same kind of “call-it” periods of unscripted play calls in Los Angeles that Moore frequently utilized in training camp.
“He tries to perfect that (borrowing),” said Saints senior offensive assistant Scott Linehan, who also overlapped with Moore in Detroit and Dallas. “He takes those pieces, logs that away and says, ‘I’m going to use that someday.’ It might be something from 12 years ago.”
The pieces extend to the building's aesthetics. Downstairs outside the Saints’ locker room, Moore had the area remodeled so that the right side of the hallway would pay homage to the Saints’ past, and the left side of the hallway would recognize the Saints’ future.
On the right side of the hallway, there are decals featuring franchise legends, their positions and the years they played for the franchise through the decades. On the left side of the hallway, there are the core values — big, bolded type that shows Moore's vision for the Saints, backed up by photos that capture the moments.
There are five core values down the left side: Takeaways, Play Style, Team Fundamentals, Situational Masters and Ball Security. Each value also has key components written out, such as “smart, fast, physical” under play style and “rip, punch, strip sack, second man, locked shot, linger and tips and overthrows” under takeaways.
Moore got the idea after seeing the Eagles and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors execute similar concepts.
“It’s really important for our players to see the focus of what’s happening right now,” Moore said.
And the coach is quick to get the walls updated with relevant examples: Less than two weeks after Jonas Sanker’s game-tying interception in the preseason, a decal of the rookie was put up near the takeaways section.
It took Sanker by surprise.
“It’s awesome,” Sanker said. “They emphasize it all the time.”
Unexpected challenges
When he meets with candidates in person, Loomis likes to toss out hypothetical scenarios to see how they’d react.
But nowhere in the interview did Loomis ask, “What if your starting quarterback suddenly retires?” Not even the Saints could have seen that coming.
“Mickey and I had some fun conversations there for the first few months,” Moore said with a grin. “A couple of times where we’d joke, ‘You wanted to be a head coach in the NFL? Here we go.’”
Derek Carr’s unexpected decision to retire in May because of a shoulder injury marked the stunning conclusion of a months-long saga that saw Carr disclose in late March he was hurt, with the quarterback and the Saints trying to determine the severity of the ailment.
During that time, Loomis said he never saw Moore panic; instead, the coach pivoted to find a solution. The team’s scouting of college quarterbacks “intensified,” Loomis said, but work had already been underway given Carr’s age (34). In some ways, Loomis said he couldn’t tell a difference in Moore — which the executive viewed as a strength.
“Different coaches react differently to — I think all eventually are going to attack the problem, but how they react initially can be different,” Loomis said.
Moore’s tendency to attack the problem is nothing new. When Linehan served as the Lions’ offensive coordinator in 2012 and 2013, he noticed how Moore, a third-string quarterback, would study TV copies of games to steal defensive signals, and then he’d share those observations with the rest of the room. Linehan could tell that Moore thought like a coach, that Moore’s father raised him to be a coach.
In 2016, with the pair now in Dallas, Linehan started to expand Moore’s responsibilities when the quarterback was out for the year with a leg injury. At first, Linehan had Moore compile the defensive signals just as he did in Detroit. But one week, Linehan asked Moore to put together clips from the red zone. Another week, Moore’s task was two-minute situations. The work got to the point where Linehan had Moore start presenting the information to the rest of the quarterbacks in the room.
“You could tell he was on the fast track,” Linehan said. “He wasn’t promoting himself. … He was just working behind the scenes, getting himself ready (to become a coach).”
Anyone familiar with Moore’s story knows that fast track: In 2018, he made the decision to retire once the Cowboys offered him a job to coach the team’s quarterbacks. By 2019, he became Dallas’ offensive coordinator after Linehan was fired.
Moore spent a total of five years as an assistant in Dallas. Of all his NFL experience, the time perhaps best prepared Moore for the realities of losing a starting quarterback on the fly. The Cowboys lost starter Dak Prescott twice in Moore’s tenure, once for most of the year in 2020 and again for the first five games in 2022.
When Moore thinks of Carr’s retirement these days, he said he thinks of a sign that Jason Garrett used to hang in the Cowboys’ training room:
The only thing that matters is what we do now.
Carving his own path
At the NFL’s owners meetings this past spring, Payton said he thinks Moore will do well as the Saints’ next coach.
There are impossible jobs and good jobs, he said. And to Payton, New Orleans’ front-office structure and ownership still make the Saints a good NFL job.
“Generally, you’re going somewhere that’s broken and you’ve got to fix it quick,” Payton said. “I think Kellen has that calmness about him. And I think there’s a uniqueness to that city, that maybe’s not for everyone, but I think he’ll do well there.”
Moore and Payton know what it’s like to wait for the right job. Before the Saints hired them, both men were part of the league’s annual coaching cycle. Moore was linked to head coaching jobs as early as 2021, when he interviewed for the Eagles’ head coaching job. He was later a finalist in the Miami Dolphins’ 2022 coaching search. Payton turned down the Oakland Raiders in 2003 after Parcells and others convinced him to stay in Dallas.
For Moore, each rejection was an opportunity to refine what he needed to work on. Before the Super Bowl, Moore admitted he was too pass-happy as a play caller earlier in his career.
It’s fitting, then, that his first job comes after he designed an Eagles offense that led the league in rushing en route to winning a championship.
Rath, coincidentally, was part of the Eagles’ hiring committee in 2021 when Philadelphia hired Nick Sirianni instead of Moore. Though Philadelphia went in a different direction, the sports science director recalled how Moore “crushed” the interview and how evident it was he’d be a head coach one day. The Eagles, too, obviously brought on Moore as their coordinator last season.
Rath said Moore’s growth since then has stemmed from his changes of scenery.
“Experiencing new organizations and different methods, that’s a blessing in this business,” he said.
Now, Moore gets to run the show in New Orleans. So far, players have eagerly embraced the approach. That excitement seems to extend well beyond the jolt that teams typically experience when changing coaching staffs. The vibes are always high in scenarios like these, but this offseason, long snapper Zach Wood and tight end Juwan Johnson remarked that this was the best it has felt in a long time.
The two are also part of the handful of players left who experienced the team’s success under Payton.
“With Sean here, he was very aggressive and (had an) assertive personality,” Wood said, bringing up Payton unprompted. “Kellen is laid back. Just himself, which I think everybody appreciates when somebody can get up in front of a room of a bunch of guys who think they’re alpha males and lead a team and not try to be anybody but yourself. Because people can usually see right through that.
“With Kellen, he’s super genuine up there.”
The mood can quickly change if losses start to pile up. As high as those within the Saints are on Moore’s future, New Orleans is still widely expected to be one of the NFL’s worst teams this season. Challenging times may very well lie ahead.
But they did for Payton, as well. As much as the Saints took the league by surprise with an NFC championship game appearance during the 2006 season, it can be easy to forget now that Payton’s teams went 7-9 and 8-8 over his next two years.
“One thing that happens is (people) are going to talk about Sean like the Sean that left here and was here for 15 years,” Loomis said. “But you should be comparing (Moore) to the Sean that was here in Year 1 and 2. … He evolved and was different in the mid and latter part of his career than he was at the beginning of his career.”
But Moore’s future still excites Loomis. He is confident that the 37-year-old is the right man for the job, just as he was once confident about a 42-year-old quarterbacks coach who just needed a chance.
Is Kellen Moore the next Sean Payton?
All he has to do is be himself.