Payton and Brees, стр. 70

Wide receiver Mike Williams to the Chargers at No. 7.

Running back Christian McCaffrey to the Panthers at No. 8.

Then, at precisely 9:12 pm, things got real.

The Cincinnati Bengals surprisingly selected Washington receiver John Ross at No. 9, a curveball few draft analysts or NFL scouts expected. Suddenly, as Payton sat at the large conference table in the Saints war room deep inside team headquarters, the reality of the situation started to sink in. With the Buffalo Bills on the clock at No. 10, the Saints were one pick, maybe 10 or 15 minutes away, from making their selection. And the top two prospects on their draft board were still available: cornerback Marshon Lattimore and Mahomes, in that order.

Mahomes wasn’t just any quarterback. The Saints graded him higher than any quarterback they’d evaluated in recent drafts. They had worked him out privately a month earlier in Lubbock, Texas, where Mahomes played collegiately at Texas Tech University. They spent the entire day with him, sending him through a battery of interviews, tests, and on-field workouts before ending the night over dinner.

“He was exceptional in the meeting that we had,” Payton said. “The one thing that stood out, this player could climb, escape, throw from all the positions. And we play in an imperfect game where there’s protection issues. And we just saw him make throws going left, going right, through the pocket, up in the pocket, I mean, really unique throws. And look, man, in a conference and on a team where they had to go into a game feeling like scoring 45 was gonna give ‘em a chance. He was very impressive and certainly a targeted player for us in that draft.”

It was the first time the Saints had seriously considering taking a quarterback so high in the draft during Payton’s coaching tenure.

With Buffalo on the clock at No. 10, and the Bills expected to select a defensive player under first-year coach Sean McDermott, Payton suddenly realized there was a very real possibility Lattimore could be picked and the Saints would have no choice but to select Mahomes, the best player available by far on their board.

Further complicating the situation, Brees, by sheer serendipity, just happened to be in the building. He and a couple of his college buddies, Jason Loerzel and Ben Smith, had just completed a wild boar hunting trip in south Louisiana and were back at the Saints training facility, their chosen meeting spot. After dining in the team cafeteria, they received an invitation from Payton to visit the war room just as the first round was getting underway. They weren’t the only VIPs there that day. Payton had also invited PGA golfers Jordan Spieth and Ryan Palmer, who were in town for the Zurich Classic of New Orleans and had played with Brees and Payton at the event’s pro-am tournament the previous day.

When the Bengals selected Ross at No. 9, Payton knew he needed to have a conversation with Brees and apprise him of where things stood. This, after all, was a potentially unprecedented situation. Taking Mahomes with the No. 11 overall pick would create shock waves across the NFL and throughout the Saints fan base. You don’t use such a valuable commodity without a plan. And the Saints, particularly Payton, were high on Mahomes’ potential.

“He was a target at No. 11,” Payton said. “The only thing that happened that we weren’t expecting, although you kind of aren’t surprised anytime when you’re selecting that early, when it got down to [Marshon] Lattimore, you keep this bubble right on the board in front of you, and you’re on pick 8 and you might have four in this bubble, and then one goes and another goes. Here it was—pick 10—and we have two players in the bubble, Lattimore and Mahomes.”

Payton knew taking Mahomes would be a potentially franchise-altering decision. And with his franchise quarterback sitting in the room, he knew he couldn’t blindside Brees by selecting his potential replacement. So he met with him outside the war room and gave him a heads-up of the situation.

“Drew was great,” Payton said. “It didn’t faze him a bit. He always thinks of the team first.”

Brees had been in this spot before. In 2004, just three years after taking Brees in the second round of the 2001 draft, the San Diego Chargers used their first-round pick, the No. 4 overall selection in the 2004 draft, to select Philip Rivers.

Then-Chargers offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer remembered running into Brees in the weight room on the eve of the draft that year and informing him of the Chargers’ plans to select a quarterback.

“We were chatting and he’s like, ‘Hey, who are we gonna draft?’” Schottenheimer told Sports Illustrated in 2019. “I said, ‘Hey, bro, listen, you need to prepare yourself, we’re probably taking a quarterback.’…It went from a real fun, jovial conversation [to] his eyes kind of just locked in. And he looked at me and said, ‘That would be the worst f——ing mistake this organization could ever make.’ And I’m like, ‘Hey, man, don’t shoot the messenger.’ He goes, ‘Worst mistake ever.’ And he walked off.”

Two years later, the Chargers went all-in with Rivers and allowed Brees to walk in free agency. Now the scenario was potentially playing out again, this time in New Orleans, 11 years later.

“I understood,” Brees said. “I knew our guys loved Lattimore but didn’t think he would be there. So, man, if Mahomes is there at 11 it would be hard not to take him, talent-wise. Hey, a really talented player, a guy that could be your guy in the future.”

Alas, fate intervened.

The Kansas City Chiefs, fully aware of the Saints’ interest in Mahomes, traded a package of three draft picks to the Bills for the right to move up from No. 27 to No. 10 and snag Mahomes. At No. 11, the Saints happily pounced on Lattimore, who would go on to win the 2017 Defensive Rookie of the Year award and earn a Pro