The True Story of Sean Payton and ‘Home Team’

Everyone loves an underdog story — especially when it comes to sports movies and especially especially if it’s based on real-life events. Home Team, the family-friendly football comedy starring Kevin James, is the latest entry in the genre, and it’s based on a very real situation that happened to New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton. Back in 2012, Payton was suspended from the NFL for a year. As a result, he went to Texas to coach his son’s youth football team. Here’s an explanation of “Bountygate,” Payton’s suspension and his brief youth football career that led to a Netflix biopic.

Who is Sean Payton?

Head coach of the New Orleans Saints since 2006, Payton coached the team to its first-ever Super Bowl in the 2009 season — and its first-ever Super Bowl win. He’s still head coach today but was suspended for the entire 2012 season as punishment for his involvement in “Bountygate.”

OK, but what is the “Bountygate” scandal? 

The short version: After the Saints’ Super Bowl win, it came to light that some of the New Orleans Saints staff offered bounty payments in a program that would reward players for hits and injuries on opponents that removed opposing players from the game. After a stalled investigation, the NFL eventually determined that 22 to 27 defensive players on the team participated, some receiving payouts ranging from “$1,500 for a ‘knockout’ hit and $1,000 for a ‘cart-off’ hit, with payouts doubling or tripling during the team’s three playoff appearances,” the league said in a statement.

The NFL identified the ringleader of the scheme as defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who was ultimately suspended from the sport for a year. Payton was suspended without pay for the 2012 season for failing to prevent the illegal transactions, denying the program existed and attempting to “encourage the false denials by instructing assistants to ‘make sure our ducks are in a row,’” per the official statement. 

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How did Sean Payton wind up coaching a kids’ football team? 

Without any professional obligations, Payton headed to the Dallas area in 2012 to spend more time with his two children and wound up becoming the offensive coordinator for his son’s middle-school football team. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2012 that, while he paid attention to how the Saints were performing while he was gone, he mostly cherished the extra time with his family.

“One of the things about what we do, so many times you’re missing things, getting pictures of things we miss, phone calls of what you missed,” he told the paper.

Was the youth team really that bad? 

Put simply, no. A meteoric rise from last place to the playoffs is great for dramatic tension in a movie. What wouldn’t have been quite as impactful is the record of the real team, the Liberty Christian Warriors, who started their season with a 30-0 win. One part of Payton’s coaching that was true for both real life and fiction: He really did use simplified versions of Saints plays. 

What other characters in Home Team are real? 

Coach Troy Lambert, played by Taylor Lautner, is based on the Liberty Christian Warriors’ real-life coach Brennan Hardy. And Payton’s ex-wife Beth, played by Jackie Sandler, is based on his real-life ex of the same name.