NEW ORLEANS — Gameday Sean did something rare a few minutes before kickoff Thursday night.
He smiled.
Sean Payton, always intense and notoriously so on game days, briefly let his guard down along the visiting sideline. He hugged his kids and his former quarterback. He gave out some high fives. He shared a warm embrace with Saints owner Gayle Benson. He kissed his wife.
He took in the scene, just for a minute.
Then he did something much more familiar: He led his team to a lopsided victory at the Superdome.
For the first time, of course, Payton unleashed “Club Dub” in the visiting locker room rather than the home side.
Denver dominated on the ground, dominated on defense and dominated in Payton’s return to New Orleans, drubbing the Saints 33-10 in primetime.
They bullied Payton’s old team on the ground to the tune of 225 rushing yards, the most for the Broncos in a game in nearly 11 years. They leaned on their veteran offensive line, which on this night got right tackle Mike McGlinchey back from a stint on injured reserve. They continued their strong overall start to the year defensively and made life miserable for New Orleans rookie quarterback Spencer Rattler.
They took their own rookie quarterback, Bo Nix, off the proverbial high dive Payton has talked so often about trying to avoid since selecting him No. 12 overall in April’s draft.
For the first time this season in the most convincing fashion in his year-plus tenure, the Broncos looked like the team Payton has talked about wanting to build since he arrived in Denver 21 months ago.
It only figures that it happened here, where Payton had a blast from the past waiting around every corner from the moment the Broncos’ charter landed Wednesday night to the time they took off back for Denver with a 4-3 record.
“He tried to downplay it,” tight end Adam Trautman said of Payton’s return here. “But everybody knew it meant a little something extra to him.”
New Orleans picked Thursday to celebrate Brees’ induction into the Saints’ Hall of Fame. Payton and several Broncos assistants — offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, senior offensive assistant Pete Carmichael and offensive coach Zach Strief — left the team hotel and showed up for part of the afternoon celebration.
“How could we not come?” Payton told nola.com. “We were right down the street, so we just threw our sweats on and came together. We had to be there.”
Then Payton and the Broncos’ offensive braintrust set about trying to get Nix as comfortable as possible early in the game. They had designed run-game options for him. They put him in an empty formation on an early third down. They gave him some manageable throws.
The results: Fine with some near-disaster mixed in.
The Broncos moved the ball more consistently in the first half than they had this year outside of a Week 3 win at Tampa Bay. In their other five games to start the year, they’d failed to generate a first down on 17 of 30 first-half possessions. Denver on Thursday night did not go three-and-out in the first half, generating multiple first downs on each of their five possessions. After an opening punt, they scored on their next four drives, though only one resulted in a touchdown.
That drive, a beauty of an 86-yarder, was appropriately capped off by a Javonte Williams 8-yard waltz untouched up the middle. Williams had his best half of the season and the Broncos had their run game in high gear from the start. Half of Denver’s 16 first-half first downs came via the run game and they plowed to 108 yards (5.7 per carry) in the opening 30 minutes alone. That propelled a dominant 19-plus minutes of possession and kept Nix and company in manageable down-and-distance regularly.
Even so, Nix missed Lucas Krull badly on the first drive of the game and then got lucky near the end of the half on a terrible throw that veteran safety Tyrann Mathieu watched clank off his hands and to the turf.
All of that hardly mattered because the Broncos defense authored a dominant performance against an injury-ravaged Saints offense. Playing without Pat Surtain II (concussion), Vance Joseph’s group only allowed Rattler and company five first downs in the first half and they controlled the entire game.
Joseph, himself a New Orleans-area native, had plenty of reason to enjoy the night immensely. His defense turned Rattler over early. They harassed him in the second half. Joseph watched outside linebacker Nik Bonitto run his sack streak to five consecutive games — only Von Miller has ever gone to six straight — and Baron Browning returned from injury after missing four games. He watched Ja’Quan McMillian bounce back from a tough outing Sunday and play his normal high-impact football from the slot. He watched Zach Allen author the next chapter in the best season of his career. He watched Cody Barton haul in a fourth-quarter interception and run it back so easily for a touchdown that he turned and backpedaled the final 10 yards to put an exclamation point on the night.
Payton downplayed the emotion of returning here but those who have known him well over the past nearly two decades said they thought he’d want this one more than perhaps any regular-season game of his career.
“He will push it all the way in,” former New Orleans running back Deuce McAllister predicted.
By the time Payton stalked through the pregame stretch lines and high-fived Broncos players — his normal routine — he looked like he had an extra pep in his step. A half-notch more swagger, even, than normal.
Gameday Sean, back in the Bayou, felt right at home.
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