That long road trip to London to play a regular season game has become a fact of life for NFL  coaches and players, but that doesn’t mean that all of them like it. It’s usually referred to as a “business trip,” but some of the challenges the Denver Broncos face going into Sunday’s London tilt against the New York Jets may have nothing to do with the usual business of winning an NFL game. 

Coach Sean Payton has been there and back more times than he probably cares to count, and he knows what can happen when the weekly schedule goes a little sideways. 

“I’m excited to go back there,” Payton said in an article written by Michael Silver of The Athletic. “But let’s just say I’ve had some interesting experiences in London over the years. There are a lot of things that can throw you for a loop.”

Payton is speaking from dubious experience. Back in 2008 he was a third-year coach of the New Orleans Saints, and he decided to cut then-punter Steve Weatherford after a lopsided road defeat at the hands of the Carolina Panthers in October. 

The coach informed Weatherford of the decision in the post-game locker room right before the team’s Charlotte-to-London took off. The team then got to watch as the punter’s belongings were located and removed from the team bus as the Saints prepared to leave the stadium. 

That left the Saints front office people with an interesting task during the flight. They had to find a replacement punter, and one of the requirements was an up-to-date passport.

The tryout scene was unusual, to say the least. 

“We didn’t have a field available,” Payton recalls, “so we just went out to the front of this very nice hotel (The Grove) and had them booming kicks on the grass. There were English ladies having their crumpets and tea out on the grounds looking on and wondering, ‘What the hell is going on?’”

The Saints won 37-32 over the then-San Diego Chargers, and replacement punter Ben Graham only had to kick three times. After the game, though, Payton was blocked by a security staffer as he tried to leave the field, and he tried to execute a swim move to get by the staffer. 

He accidentally made contact, and when the Saints got back to Louisiana, Payton was greeted by NFL officials who’d been sent to investigate the incident. Things are better organized now, but the Denver coach knows better than to rule out unexpected surprises, whether they happen before, during or after the game.