Sean Payton is staying with the New Orleans Saints

After tremendous amounts of anxiety, the wait and anticipation are over for New Orleans Saints fans in regards to head coach Sean Payton.

Sean Payton met with the media on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the countless rumors and speculative reports that have floated out there. He’s staying the head coach of the New Orleans Saints.

Payton said, “I don’t ever envision myself coaching anywhere else.” He further stated that he’s looking forward to where the team is going, and also acknowledged the fan base and how supportive they’ve been.

Payton was said to be the targeted interest of the Indianapolis Colts before the team extended Chuck Pagano, but that ended up being a false report. It didn’t stop there, as Payton was linked to California (where his daughter attends college), Dallas, Miami, and New York. On Tuesday night, Jerry Jones’ plane was spotted at the Lakefront Airport in New Orleans. It raised some concern, but ultimately after the hard work of The Advocate’s Nick Underhill, we found out that Jones was just in town after being asked if he was in town for Sean Payton.

Per sources close to the situation, I was told that the organization was behind Payton, saying that they wanted him to stay and that he had a lot of support behind them. FOX’s Jay Glazer made an appearance on The Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday to talk about the future of Payton, bringing up the fact that Payton and Mickey Loomis had been through a lot, and were hashing out a lot on Monday night.

The Saints have had some real opportunities in regards to their player personnel decisions, most notably Junior Galette, so if there was indeed tension between Loomis and Payton, that is just one of many of the things that could have caused tension.

Payton, who just turned 52 at the end of December, puts the notion of him leaving to bed finally. The team can now move on to the more important tasks at hand, like working the projected $150-154 million salary cap projection.