Sean Payton took some heat for a pair of questionable challenge decisions in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s divisional round loss to the Minnesota Vikings, and he offered an interesting explanation for them afterwards.
Following the 29-24 defeat, the New Orleans Saints head coach said that a faulty monitor in the team’s booth was partially to blame for his challenges.
“Our monitor was down; our booth was the only booth that didn’t have a feed to it,” said Payton, per the New Orleans Advocate’s Joel A. Erickson. “You just gotta go with your gut, and fortunately it wasn’t an issue with the timeouts.
“The feed was out for a handful of plays,” he continued. “Listen, that happens, though. We didn’t get a look at any of those, and I felt like they were significant-enough calls. Like I said, fortunately, the timeouts didn’t affect us.”
Payton made two puzzling challenge calls within a minute of each other on a crucial Vikings drive late in the game. The first was on a 27-yard Jairus Wright catch that he bobbled before coming down cleanly with, and the second came on an incompletion by Case Keenum where his knee came close to touching the ground before he got rid of the ball. Neither play seemed like it had any chance of going in the Saints’ favor, and indeed neither did, leaving Payton with just one timeout the rest of the way. Vikings kicker Kai Forbath capped the drive with a 49-yard field goal that proved crucial in such a close game.
Faulty monitor or not, Payton will have a hard time living down those head-scratching challenges now that his team is headed home. At least he wasn’t the only losing coach on Sunday who found himself with some explaining to do.
