Sean Payton Reportedly Considered Offering Bill Belichick Temporary Broncos Head Coach Role
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Sean Payton once floated a plan so wild it sounds made up – hire Bill Belichick to coach the Broncos just long enough to break the all-time wins record, then hand him the keys back. That’s according to a detailed piece from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, published Tuesday, digging into Payton’s mindset during Denver’s playoff run last season.
The story walks through the weeks before the 2026 AFC divisional-round matchup against Buffalo and the AFC championship game against New England. It’s the kind of access fans rarely get – real insight into what coaches are actually thinking during the biggest weeks of the season.
But one detail stands out above everything else: Payton’s relationship with Belichick, and a scheme that never made it past the idea stage.
The two coaches have history. Both worked under Bill Parcells at different points in their careers, and both have spent well over a decade and a half as NFL head coaches. When Belichick and the Patriots split after the 2023 season, he walked away with 333 career wins between regular season and playoffs combined.
That number is where Payton’s idea started.
Per Wickersham, Payton considered pitching Broncos owner Greg Penner on a plan to bring Belichick in as head coach – but only temporarily, just until he reached 15 wins. That total would’ve pushed Belichick to 348 career victories, enough to pass Don Shula for the most wins in NFL history. Payton’s role in this arrangement? Assistant head coach, waiting in the wings, ready to take back the job once Belichick hit the mark.
It never went anywhere. Payton reportedly decided against even bringing it to Penner, calling it too complicated and, in his own way, too much to ask of a friend.
Still, it’s worth sitting with how unusual this plan actually was. There’s no clean way to hand a job back and forth like that in the NFL; the logistics alone would’ve been a mess. And there’s another problem – nobody knows how long it actually would’ve taken Belichick to get to 15 wins with that Broncos roster. Could’ve been one season. Could’ve been three.
Looking at where things stand now, it’s not hard to understand why the whole idea fizzled before it ever got off the ground. Belichick isn’t chasing NFL records anymore; he’s coaching college football. He’s currently leading the University of North Carolina, now in his second season on campus.
