Why the Saints didn’t get as much for Sean Payton as Jon Gruden trade, explained

The New Orleans Saints traded Sean Payton for draft picks, but didn’t get a haul as flashy as the Raiders once did for Jon Gruden.

After it looked like the prospect of Sean Payton coming back to coach in 2023 was dead in the water, a deal rapidly materialized between Payton, the Denver Broncos, and the New Orleans Saints.

As a reminder, the Saints owned Payton’s rights — he retired after the 2021 season and spent 2022 working as a studio analyst for FOX — this year and next, which meant they had to give permission for the hire to happen. The compensation for them waiving their rights to his coaching is why the trade went down.

The deal includes a late first-round pick in 2023 going to the Saints (it is a pick originally owned by the San Francisco 49ers). They also receive Denver’s second-round pick next year. In addition to Payton’s rights, the Saints sent Denver a third-round pick.

It pales in comparison to what the Las Vegas (then Oakland) Raiders got when they traded coach Jon Gruden in the early 2000s. The Raiders, then, received two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and $8 million from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in exchange for Gruden.

Why didn’t the Saints get as much for Sean Payton as Raiders did for Jon Gruden?

Very few head coaching trades have happened in the NFL. Most of the trades that have occurred surrounding head coaches have actually involved the league stepping in to hand out compensation in return for broken contracts — as NewOrleans.football reminded me this morning (subscription required) — rather than exchanges of assets between teams.

The only real comparison is all the way back in 2002 when Gruden was traded. That was over two decades ago, and for one thing, things change in the NFL and the value of picks is different year-to-year and era to era.

Drafting well is everything in the modern NFL, and based on the current market conditions, what the Saints got is considered a haul, even if it’s not the same as what the Raiders received then.

There’s one other important reason why the Saints didn’t get as much, and it has to do with what Gruden and Payton were up to immediately before the trade went down.

Gruden was actively coaching for the Raiders, about to carry out the last year of his contract in Oakland. Had he not been traded, he would have simply put on a visor in black and silver and coached for another team not named the Bucs.

Payton’s situation is different. The Saints had less leverage than Oakland did because Payton — while his coaching employment rights were held by New Orleans — was working for FOX, not the Saints.

That likely leads to the Saints having to be a bit softer with negotiation. While they would have liked to have gotten two first-round picks like the Raiders did, it’s hard to do so when you don’t even really hold the full benefits of the asset you’re trying to trade.

In the end, New Orleans replenishes its barren draft closet and will look to make an addition in the first round this year. Their own top-10 pick is owned by the Eagles in the 2023 draft.