PHOENIX — It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sean Payton’s new staff at the Denver Broncos is peppered with coaches and supervisors who shared a sideline with him during his 15 seasons with the New Orleans Saints.
But as the coach mooted a return to the game last year, there was one coach he knew would attack him: Zach Strief.
“He was a target,” Payton said Monday at the annual owners’ meeting. “Wherever I went, if I could, (I wanted to) hire him as a line coach.”
Payton spent just one season working as a colleague alongside Strief after Strief left his position as the Saints’ play-by-play radio voice over to accept a spot as the team’s offensive line assistant coach. But their relationship dates back to Payton’s earliest days with the Saints, giving Payton plenty of evidence to support the idea that Strief would be successful at the job.
He pointed to Strief’s unusual career path — a seventh-round draft selection that beat any chance of surviving a dozen years in the NFL; a former player who went straight into the broadcast booth after retiring, not as a color analyst but as a play-by-play broadcaster; a station that seamlessly transitioned into coaching.
“There are certain people that you meet in your life that you just know are high achievers,” Payton said. “They know what they don’t know, they will find out quickly and succeed. He’s one of those people.”
Payton shared a story Monday morning about how he first met Strief. As Payton prepared for his first draft with the Saints, he called the late Randy Walker, then Northwestern University head coach, to ask about a quarterback in this year’s draft class.
Walker, Payton said, was usually stingy with compliments. This is how he became aware of Strief.
“We were done with the quarterback and he was like, ‘What do you think of my right tackle?’” Payton recalled. “…I said, ‘Who’s your real tackle?’ And he yelled at me like I should have known, and I probably should have, “Zach Strief! This boy can play in your league.”
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