Is Sean Payton's Age Playing A Role In His Play-Calling Decisions?

It's a natural tendency for most people to modify their behavior as they get older, in many cases becoming more cautious than when they were happy-go-lucky 25-year-olds.

For every 95-year-old grandmother who decides to take up skydiving, there are thousands who are approaching an end to middle age who choose to drive slower or eat healthier or go to bed earlier or indulge that curious urge to binge watch reruns of the "Golden Girls."

When considering Denver Broncos' head coach Sean Payton, who turns 63 on Dec. 29, it appears to some that his inevitable march toward his golden years will include more conservative play-calling for the Broncos' offense.

Referencing an ESPN report from July, on Oct. 9, Andrew Mason of Denver Sports inked a piece in which Payton was quoted by ESPN as saying: "Play-calling is harder at 62 than at 42. As you get older, maybe you don’t like driving in the rain at night.”

The writer also mentioned Payton's thoughts from a press conference he held prior to a Denver playoff game last January regarding how his approach to play-calling has evolved over the years.

“The thing that I have to continue to - that changes as you get older - is you still have to be quick,” he said nine months ago. “Like, play just ran, boom, next play," before adding, "When I was younger, we’d run a reverse on the 8-yard line and I’d think nothing of it. And as you get older, you think about all the ramifications … and so, I have to also remove that.… Those are things that I find that are challenges compared to when I was [37] in New York [as offensive coordinator of the New York Giants] or in my - whatever.”

The discussion is pertinent because on Oct. 8, Payton announced that he was reclaiming play-calling duties from offensive coordinator Davis Webb after watching the Broncos' offense perform in fits and starts while the team got off to a 2-2 start to the season.

The discussion gained further relevance when Payton made two critical fourth-down calls late in the Chargers' game. Both times, he chose to forsake going for it on fourth-and-short - the first instance of which came with the ball at the Los Angeles one-yard line - in favor of kicking field goals, both of which Will Lutz converted to provide the final six-point margin in the 23-17 victory.

At this point, some additional context is needed. We live today in an NFL epoch that may be best dubbed, "Fourth Down, Shmourth Down; We're Going For It."

From the game's beginnings until roughly the mid-2010s, coaches were hesitant to go for it on fourth down, preferring to punt in order to flip field position or kick a field goal if that was a viable option. In that time, teams would average 13 to 15 fourth-down attempts per season, many of which came out of desperation if a team was chasing a winning or tying score late in the game.

That began to really change around 2015 when scads of number-crunchers invaded front offices across the league. Upon reviewing historical game situations and play-calling data, these analytical wizards determined that teams would be better off if they tried to run scrimmage plays on more of their fourth-down situations, rather than going the kicking route.

This new perspective led to a seismic uptick in the number of fourth-down attempts beginning with the 2015 season, buttressed by a new metric - expected points added (EPA) - that attempts to gauge the value of each play in terms of how it affects a team's likelihood of scoring points.

From 2015 through 2019, there were a total of between 600 and 700 league-wide fourth-down attempts (19 to 22 per team) annually. That was before the arrival of "I don't care where the ball is, go for it" disciples like Detroit Lions' coach Dan Campbell and his offensive coordinator Ben Johnson helped push the total number of annual fourth-down attempts past the 800 mark, with the 886 attempted (28 per team) in 2024 the current high-water mark.

This increased reliance on fourth-down gambles also led to the creation of a new position on every team's staff: the so-called "game-management" coach whose sole responsibility is to parse the numbers and provide options for the head coach to consider should certain game situations arise, such as, "here are your options when it's fourth-and-2 from the opponents' 28 in a game in which you are trailing by three points with nine minutes to play."

It's also gotten to the point that a coach who deviates from the new fourth-down orthodoxy is required to explain why he made his against-the-grain decision, with that explanation commonly beginning with, "I may be old school..." which is definitely something you'd rarely hear a 25-year-old say.

In reality, a look at Payton's head-coaching career, which began in 2006 with the New Orleans Saints, shows that he has never fully bought into the go-for-it craze, perhaps because he was jokingly "raised by a father who was in casualty claims and insurance,” as Mason noted in his Oct. 9 report.

In New Orleans, Payton's fourth-down attempts were below league average except for his first two season of 2006 and 2007 when the Saints ran a fourth-down play 20 and 25 times, respectively. In 15 years at the helm of the Saints, Payton's teams went an average of 9-for-16 on fourth-down plays.

It appears that what's most important to him - as it should be for every coach - is whether or not the fourth-down play is liable to succeed. He was never more proficient in determining this than in the three-season stretch from 2016-18, when the Saints ran 46 fourth-down plays and gained the necessary yardage 38 times, a stunning 82.6% success rate.

In his three full seasons since arriving in Denver, Payton went for it 20, 22 and 20 times, with the Broncos converting 38 of those 62 attempts, a success rate of 61.3%. And so far in 2026, the Broncos are 2-for-3 on fourth-down plays, the second-lowest number of attempts in the league, ahead of only the 5-0 San Francisco 49ers, who have tried two.

So, is this what Broncos' fans are to expect from Payton moving forward, actuary-like fourth-down decisions that result in three points being put up on the board rather than chasing the greater glory of a touchdown? It will be interesting to watch it unfold as the Broncos look to get their offense humming while they try to track down the front-running Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West.