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Saints' Sean Payton doesn't think ESPN should zoom in on play sheet

METAIRIE, La. -- Sean Payton said he doesn't think opponents can really glean anything valuable from seeing the zoomed-in look of his play-calling sheet during ESPN's "Monday Night Football" broadcast. But the New Orleans Saints coach clearly wasn't a fan of the network's decision to do so.

"Pretty soon they'll be in our bench area helping out with the play calls," cracked Payton, who said the access of cameras and microphones seems to increase every year. "I don't think there's much to it. There's a lot of terminology. But I am kind of surprised it showed up on the TV screen. … I wouldn't put it on if I was ESPN."

When asked if there's anything he could use from an opponents' play sheet, Payton said, "There'd be nothing to really do with it. You look at their terminology. There's nothing that it's really giving you. ... It's 50 different names of plays, they're not numbered in any particular order."

Payton said the bigger concern for all teams around the NFL is how much the quarterback's cadence gets picked up with microphones now on guards or centers for nationally-televised broadcasts.

"That's significant. That topic, we would have a database now. … Shoot Peyton Manning's doing a commercial because of it," Payton said -- referencing Manning's famous "Omaha! Omaha!" call. "That's much more significant than what we're discussing, in regards to get-offs … the tempo of a cadence, how it sounds, when a play's changed. That's different now. That's something we're adjusting with, everyone has to."

Saints quarterback Drew Brees said he thinks every quarterback "kind of has their own spin" on their cadence at the line and does something a little bit different.

"But at the end of the day, you change it up," Brees said. "You don't give ‘em the same thing every time."