Sean Payton elaborates on his “worry about your frickin’ meat” line

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Saints coach Sean Payton coined a potential catch phrases for the ages earlier this week, when he said on WWL that he responded to a butcher who questioned a decision to go for two early in Sunday’s eventual loss to the 49ers by saying that the butcher should “worry about your own frickin’ meat.”

In a Thursday session with reporters, Payton elaborated on the exchange.

“You know, on Sunday after a game, I’m going to pick up some food for dinner, I really don’t want to hear about a two-point play call,” Payton said, via Mike Triplett of ESPN.com. “Anyway, it just got under my skin. I circled my cart back around and kind of called him out. I was kind of sliding down the aisle, got the produce right here to the left, you see the meats, I made a right and I’m heading for the coffee. I thought they were all kind of in jest, and I heard one of them say something about, ‘Why’d you go for two?’ I kept walking toward the dairy and I’m like, ‘Ah, I’m not letting this go, I’m turning around.’

“I went back and he was fine, it wasn’t negative, he just wanted to know. And I explained it to him. I would never [go for two] that early. But when we get a penalty, now we’re on the one-yard line and we’re 50 percent closer. He got it. Then I gave him a hard time and said, ‘Some of these cuts don’t look good to me.’ That was what happened. It was in jest. We were having a little fun.”

Payton indeed had a good reason for going for two. A personal foul on the 49ers from the preceding touchdown allowed Payton to choose to enforce it on the try, moving it from the two to the one.

“I didn’t feel like kicking a touchback, thought about kicking an onside kick,” Payton said. “So on the one-yard line, I think we’re gonna get two points. And then we get the defense misaligned, obviously it doesn’t have any success. And then the game ends and, ‘Why were you going for two?’ Because I wanted to. We were on the one-yard line.”

Some were skeptical about the story, because the concept of an NFL head coach shopping at a grocery store after a game seems far-fetched.

“I was actually shopping for my dinner at Whole Foods,” Payton said. “People are like, ‘Oh, he actually shops for his dinner?’ Yeah, I shop for my dinner. And I go down the aisle with a cart like everyone else.”

He also has a sense of humor like everyone else. And he also resents a little bit, like everyone else, people who don’t know his job trying to tell him how to do it.