Craig Carton and Sean Payton Image edited by Liam McGuire

Bill Belichick and Sean Payton share more in common than their Hall of Fame coaching resumes: they both dislike Craig Carton.

Carton launched his third tenure on WFAN this week, this time with Chris McMonigle as his co-host in afternoon drive. And Wednesday afternoon, Carton welcomed his former FS1 co-host Mark Schlereth to the show to break down the NFL, and his apparent feud with Sean Payton.


“A guy that knows why Sean Payton refuses to talk to me,” Carton said as he introduced Schlereth. “And will confirm the story that he’s upset that it was the worst Disney movie of all-time.”

That movie was presumably Home Team, a Netflix film featuring Kevin James as Payton, and depicts him coaching his son’s youth football team during his year-long suspension from the NFL after the New Orleans Saints’ bounty scandal.

Schlereth couldn’t confirm Home Team was at the core of Payton’s disdain for Carton, saying, “I don’t know if that’s the reason, it may go deeper than that.” But Schlereth could confirm Payton has disdain for Carton.

“I called Sean, ‘Hey, dude, do me a favor, we just started this new TV show…want you to be the first guest.’ And he’s like, ‘Absolutely, no problem at all, anything for you.’ And apparently, ‘anything for you’ means anything for you as long as Craig Carton isn’t involved,” Schlereth said. “Because as soon as he found out Craig was involved, he was like, ‘Hey, I’ll do anything for you except that. I’m not coming on the show with that guy.’”

Carton can only pinpoint his criticism of Home Team as the reason why Payton sought to avoid him. And if the brash radio host had a reason to think he did something else to tick Payton off, he probably would have shared it. But if Home Team really is the reason, then Payton should have beef with a lot of people, because the Netflix film wasn’t widely a beloved sports movie.

That’s two Super Bowl winning head coaches who have seemingly lost Carton’s number, with Belichick being the other. Carton previously claimed he developed a friendship with Belichick when the two were working in Cleveland. So much of a friendship that Carton says Belichick even offered him the low level coaching position that was eventually given to Eric Mangini with the Cleveland Browns in the early ‘90s. More recently, Belichick has claimed he never heard of Craig Carton.

About Brandon Contes

Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com