Broncos' Sean Payton on playing football in England in 1988 - ESPN

LONDON — It exists as one line of Sean Payton's football résumé, a list that includes 173 regular-season wins as an NFL coach, a Super Bowl victory and several record-setting seasons on offense. But Payton the coach was once Payton the aspiring player — an Illinois Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

In 1988, he spent a six-month stint in England as a quarterback clinging to a last chance to play the game that has since become his livelihood. Payton is making his third trip to England as a head coach — this time with the Denver Broncos, who face the New York Jets Sunday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) — but he was once behind center for the Leicester Panthers.

«I was 23 years old,» Payton said. «Right out of college and basically playing for pizza, because you enjoyed it. It was a good six months.»

Leicester is a city of roughly 370,000 in the East Midlands section of England, roughly 103 miles northwest of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Its sporting pinnacle was Leicester City F.C.'s run to the 2015-16 Premier League title after facing £5,000-1 preseason odds.

In 1988, the Leicester Panthers were a part of what was called the Budweiser National League (the league is now called the British American Football Association). After Payton's playing career at Eastern Illinois had ended, in which he threw for more than 10,000 yards, he had played for two Arena Football League teams, the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League and briefly as a replacement player for the Chicago Bears during the 1987 NFL players strike.

And he wondered what might be next.

«I'd been in the Arena league, I'd been up in the CFL… just finished playing during that [NFL] strike season and was getting ready to kind of get