NEW ORLEANS (AP) ― The New Orleans Saints and suspended coach Sean Payton will indeed be together again next season as the bounty scandal fades into history and the bid to win a second Super Bowl resumes.
Payton has agreed in principle to a multiyear contract extension, the team said.
“Very happy it is official,” quarterback Drew Brees said in an email to the AP. “Never had any doubts.”
Payton was due to begin his seventh season as the Saints’ head coach in 2012 before being suspended for the whole season by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in connection with the NFL’s bounty investigation.
“I am pleased that Sean Payton will be our head coach for a long time,” owner Tom Benson said in a statement. “Now we can focus our attention on building on the winning tradition with the Saints that Sean has played such a large role in.”
Payton signed an extension in 2011 worth more than $6 million a year that would have kept him in New Orleans through 2015, but Goodell objected to certain language in that deal, leaving Payton’s future uncertain until the deal was reached Friday.
The language in question in the previous extension gave Payton the right to opt out early if general manager Mickey Loomis left the club for any reason.
The new agreement also must be approved by the NFL. The team did not disclose the length of the extension or financial terms.
Payton is the only coach in Saints history to win a Super Bowl, a title earned at the end of the 2009 season. But his legacy was tarnished by the NFL’s bounty probe, as Goodell ruled that Payton failed to exert proper institutional control over a cash-for-hits bounty program run by former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams from 2009-2011.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
