Winning in the NFL often comes at a cost, and few coaches embodied that philosophy more than Sean Payton. While his demanding approach helped shape one of the most successful eras for the New Orleans Saints (with seven divisional titles and Super Bowl XLIV triumph), it also pushed players to their limit. And former Saints OT Terron Armstead revealed the toughest part of his playing career was seemingly under Payton.

“I appreciate every single moment of it because it made me who I am today,” Armstead said on the In Good Company with Mitch Morse show. “It has molded me… and still makes me go after it still today. You know what I mean? It’s just kind of how we’re wired after being in the league for so long. The thing that I struggle with the most, I’ll be honest, the business. I had played football since I was five. I get to the NFL, and this is not football anymore. Not just, you know, we’re only playing football two hours a day for practice. All the other stuff, it was a problem for me… It took some time for me to get calloused to the business side of the NFL. At first, it was not fun. And Sean Payton didn’t make it fun either. It was like, it was just tough. It was work all day, every day.”

After earning three-time First-Team All-SWAC selection and Consensus All-American, Terron Armstead entered the NFL in 2013, drafted in the third round by the New Orleans Saints. But the reality once he entered the big league was completely different from what the offensive tackle had imagined.

From mandatory media cooperation to strict corporate sponsorships and uniform compliance, certain obligations under the NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement bothered Armstead, who was excited to start his NFL career. But that wasn’t the only reason the NFL seemed difficult to him.

Terron Armstead began his NFL career under head coach Sean Payton, who was entering his first year as the New Orleans Saints’ head coach in 2006. According to Armstead, Payton was a demanding head coach who wanted more from his players while the latter had just started adjusting to a new environment.

Even former Saints center Max Unger, during one of his interviews from a few years ago, echoed Terron’s sentiments,

“He referenced a lot of when the staff got here back in ’06, how they did their camp, and how he kind of wanted to take it back to that a little bit, as much as he could. He told us, ‘This is gonna be tough, this is gonna be as hard of a camp as I can make it. And I want to make you guys fight and compete at every position.'”

While Payton remains an NFL head coach with the Denver Broncos, Armstead wrapped up his playing career in 2025 after 12 seasons (9 for the Saints and 3 for the Dolphins). Even though he struggled, Armstead holds no regrets about how his career turned out and will soon be honored in the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame.