It’s 2010, and the Colts and Saints stand in the Hard Rock Stadium. Drew Brees is on one side of the gridiron while Peyton Manning takes on the other, and as the game comes to its final leg, Sean Payton is about to have the biggest night of his life. The Brees-Sean Payton duo comes out as champions and then…everything goes silent. It’s been 14 years and Payton is still chasing the old rush.

He tried all his luck and ultimately gave up in 2022. But the thought of winning another Lombardi might have lingered in the back of his head because a year later, he decided to come back to the scene, only to coach Russell Wilson in hopes of the victory title. That’s when a debacle started, and everything went haywire for Payton.

This year, Payton has hope because he finally found a quarterback that shows him glimpses of Drew Brees. And that’s the topic of conversation on The Stinkin Truth Podcast with Mark Schlereth. Drew Brees wanted to see Sean Payton make a comeback, but the things he was seeing from Russ didn’t make any sense.

Schlereth had an encounter with Drew Brees in the last Super Bowl and that’s when the truth came out. The narrative that Sean Payton made matters difficult for Wilson apparently is not true. In fact, according to Brees, he tried his best to work with Russell and match the plays, but it fell apart for the Denver Broncos.

“I bumped into Drew Brees at the Super Bowl and he point blank told me I didn’t recognize the offense that they were running which tells you what? It was completely adjusted based upon what they thought Russell could do and what they knew he couldn’t,” said Schlereth.

Despite the duo trying to work together, we all know what happened. Payton flamed Russell Wilson on national TV and throughout the season, Wilson ended up taking a whole lot of sacks, killing a whole lot of drives. To his credit, the D-Line wasn’t strong either. But Wilson has visibility issues outside the pocket that lead him to extend plays and take sacks. He took 45 sacks last season! Imagine how many drives that killed. But to his defense, he has a TD-INT ration of 28-8.

Sean Payton couldn’t take all this anymore and decided to bench him for the rest of the season, although that $39 million debacle was something else. But the point is, Russell Wilson didn’t fit in Sean Payton’s schemes. That’s why he got Bo Nix, a QB that he has faith in.

Can the Sean Payton-Bo Nix duo cause a surge in the NFL this year?

For now, project Bo Nix is under development because he’s the QB2 behind Jarrett Stidham. Though Nix has 5 years of experience at college, the pro leagues can still be unforgiving. It might be best for him to just sit and absorb this year, despite all the potential he has. Schlereth pointed out why Nix can make Sean Payton’s dreams a reality.

“But the value that Sean had on him was one, like he’s probably the number one quarterback that they worked out as far as his ability to learn something quickly. So, you know, Sean sends him the Playbook at 5:00 at night and says I want to go over you know an insane amount of information and there’s no way you could learn it all and the guy who handled that better than anybody else was Bo Nix.” Cramming plays is just as important as passing the ball and supposedly, Nix is good at hitting the playbooks too.

Nix became a totally different guy when he joined the Oregon team. He had 10 sacks in 2 seasons! That number would have to shoot about 4 times to match how much Russell Wilson got sacked in a season. Yet, the question remains, would that be a fair standard to set? NFL is a whole different league and, in this day, and age, defenders are built like tanks. So, what can he do to avoid those blitzes?

The only way to avoid problems in this pass-happy league is to get rid of the ball quickly. Nix can do that with the ability he has shown in the past. Almost every scout at the time of the Combine could attest to that fact and his “grip it and rip it” technique has nothing but praise. Nix has an average release time of 2.5 seconds, which was no.4 at the time of the draft. Will that translate into his NFL journey?

Will the rookie star pass the ball with the pinpoint accuracy of Drew Brees? That will soon be apparent when we see Bo Nix take the field this year at any required time.