I got to be honest. For the first in months, I find myself disappointed by a Sean Payton-related story. A shattered fire alarm preceding an arsonist-esque incineration of the Cincinnati Bengals had all the makings of a mind game/motivational tactic that went just a little too far. Imagine the littering of the locker room with mouse traps to remind his players "don't eat the cheese", but on the type of steroids that might have someone destroying private property in an uncontrollable rage...
That's what I immediately presumed to have happened when I heard that a safety system had been pulverized by an emotionally aggressive head coach that loves nothing more than going to extravagant lengths to inspire his team. I swear, it didn't even cross my mind that the smoke detector might have interrupted him first, because I had already connected the dots of deductive reasoning to conclude there was a reverse psychology to him intentionally smashing an alarm to light a fire under the ass of a locker room that might have felt a little too comfortable after beating the Rams. That line of thinking might sound very stupid to an outsider now that we know it's not the case, but - prior to this past week - you could've said the same about a head coach in the NFL getting far enough under the skin of an opposing cornerback that he'd respond with the threat of a contentiously shared local delicacy. To think that even someone as unpredictable as Sean Payton would beat the hell out of a fire alarm to prove a point might seem unrealistically reckless, but so did him partaking in a mid-season interview during which he threw rocks at the shield of the league that actively tried to get him kicked to the curb. We're talking about a competitive, competitive S.O.B. that spent the bye week internet trolling a frienemy. The choke sign to Devonta Freeman didn't exactly work in his favor, and the SKOL clap gone horribly, horribly wrong backfired in brutal fashion, but Sean Payton has spent the last year and change painting his magnus opus of not giving one single flying fuck. So yeah, he may not have destroyed a fire alarm in the process of using it as a prop to galvanize his team. However, the Bengals calling the cops on Sean Payton exclusively is evidence that it's not entirely out of the question that he might do such a thing during a season in which his petty and combative personality might actually be reaching its peak.
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