Summary
- Home Team is a true story but takes liberties with certain elements of the Bountygate scandal, causing controversy among viewers.
- Sean Payton actually coached his son's middle school football team during his suspension from the NFL.
- The movie features real Saints plays that were used by the Liberty Christian Warriors but simplified for 12-year-olds.
Those who watched the Netflix sports comedy have wondered, "Is Home Team a true story?" The answer is yes but with all true story films, the movie made certain changes to heighten the drama and improve the narrative flow. That said, some of the things that remain true about the movie may be surprising to some viewers. Home Team follows the events immediately after the 2012 season suspension of New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton (Kevin James). This was due to the scandal known as "Bountygate," in which Saints players allegedly received bounties to purposefully injure opposing players.
The injured players included Minnesota Vikings star veteran Brett Favre and Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner. This scandal is why Sean Payton's net worth has been a hot topic among NFL fans. However, while these real figures in the Home Team true story play a central part in the story, there are elements to the drama that take liberties with the truth. The Home Team movie focuses on Sean Payton and his too-good-to-be-true story before he was brought back onto the Saints in the 2013 season.
Home Team's Take On The Bountygate Scandal Caused Controversy
Being the first NFL head coach to ever be suspended for any reason, some believe Home Team glosses over the controversial Bountygate scandal too lightly. However, of all coaches to have serious scandals tarnish their career, like the "Spygate" and "Deflategate" scandals against Bill Belichick's New England Patriots, Payton had an especially unusual off-coaching story. For instance, while not being allowed to coach NFL football during his suspension, Payton returned to his family in Argyle, Texas, and coached his son's middle school football team, the Liberty Christian Warriors.
The all-star cast of Home Team portrays real people and events. However, it's easy to believe the film is more fiction than fact, as it plays fast and loose with certain elements of the Bountygate scandal, causing a fair amount of controversy. There are also non-Bountygate moments that were fictionalized. One example is that the entire football team didn't start collectively vomiting on the field after eating homemade "Super Logs." Nonetheless, there are plenty of shocking events from the Home Team true story that made the movie that deal with the present-day lives of the real main characters.
True - Yes, Sean Payton Really Did Coach His Son's Team
Lots of kids in football can claim that their dad is one of the coaches - but it's much less common for the coach to be a bonafide NFL celebrity. However, in this case, young Connor Payton benefited both from a familial bond and some genuinely world-class coaching. Although the Bountygate scandal alone merits the Home Team movie a "true story" credit, the scarcely believable middle school football coaching connection makes much of the movie a genuinely true story, as opposed to something just loosely based on a true story.
Change - Ex-Wife's Husband and Coach Troy Lambert
Beth Shuey did remarry to a man named Jamie, but no evidence indicates that he's anything like Rob Schneider's man bun-flaunting, transcendental meditating character. More notably, Payton and Shuey filed for divorce in June 2012, which was during Payton's suspension and when the Home Team movie takes place. The divorce wasn't finalized until 2014. Therefore, she wouldn't have been remarried during the movie's events. Rob Schneider is a longtime Adam Sandler collaborator, having worked on such Happy Madison movies as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and Grown Ups, so this was a way to get him in the movie.
Another notable character change for the Home Team movie is Taylor Lautner's Coach Troy Lambert. Lautner's character is greatly inspired by Brennan Hardy, who coached the Warriors during the 2012 season with Payton while he was studying at Texas Christian University. On the other hand, there's no proof of Gary Valentine's Coach Mitch Bizone being inspired by any real-life Warriors coach. With the character's dependency to "coach juice," one can only hope.
True - Using Simplified Saints Plays For Son's Team
The Saints won the Super Bowl in 2009 with Sean Payton, which is all the more understandable that the kids in the movie are as excited as they are to receive real Saints' playbook plays from their offensive coordinator. Even better is the fact that this is something that Coach Payton really did. If other football movies and shows like Friday Night Lights prove anything, it's the fact that football is king in Texas. Not only did the Warriors have Sean Payton's kid on their team to brag about, but they also used real Saints plays on the field - albeit, plays simplified for 12-year-olds to understand and remember.
Change - The Warriors Weren't As Bad As The Movie Makes Them
Movies need a conflict, which isn't provided with a dominating football team. In the Home Team movie, the Warriors celebrated for just putting something on the scoreboard with a "We got a touchdown" chant that reverberates throughout the film. When Coach Payton arrives on the team, single-touchdown games turn into full-on wins that lead to a championship with the formidable Porcupines. It's a classic underdog story that's seen in sports movies as varied as Miracle and Remember the Titans to Little Giants and The Mighty Ducks.
The real Liberty Christian Warriors weren't actually struggling that much. They were a pretty decent team, starting their season with a 30-0 win, but Sean Payton's arrival caused them to improve dramatically. The team in the Home Team movie regularly shut the scoreboard off, which is something that really does happen in middle school football after a certain amount of points.
Change - Contacting Coach Bill Parcells, Not Bill Cowher For Porcupines Game Help
In what appears to be a comedic gag in the Home Team movie, Sean Payton calls former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher to help him with an old formation called a "single-wing" used by the rival Springtown Porcupines. The Porcupines were a real team that played against the otherwise undefeated Warriors in the championship game, and Sean Payton actually called up a former head coach for help. Also in real life, the Warriors narrowly lost the championship to the Porcupines.
Sandler-produced movies aren't averse to using celebrity cameos for laughs, with pro golfer Lee Trevino in Happy Gilmore being a classic example. However, Cowher's cameo is used to represent Bill Parcells, Payton's mentor and the former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, New York Jets, New England Patriots, and New York Giants. Considering that Parcells is 80 years old and hasn't worked since 2010, he was probably not up for the Home Team movie cameo. Bill Cowher, however, is still working and is a football analyst for CBS Sports' NFL Today.
Change - Sean Payton's Daughter Isn't In The Film
The Home Team movie shows Sean Payton returning to his ex-wife and son, played by Jackie Sandler and Tait Blum, respectively. Missing from the picture, however, is Payton's daughter Meghan. True story portrayals sometimes remove characters if they're not relevant to the narrative. At 24 years of age, Meghan Payton is a sports reporter based out of Los Angeles for Chat Sports. She didn't fit into the fictional version of the Home Team true story, so she ended up omitted completely.
Now - Sean Payton Is Back Coaching NFL Football
While Kevin James wants to join the Twi-Dads fan club after working with Twilight's Taylor Lautner, the real-life Sean Payton announced on January 25, 2022, that was he done as the Saints head coach. Payton wanted to avoid the word retirement, and he joked that he had a retirement pact with Kevin James that suggested he'd retire when the movie came out to boost promotion. That lasted for one year. He worked as a sports analyst for Fox, but when the season ended, Payton returned to the NFL. He became the new head coach of the Denver Broncos, though he's already made some comments that many found controversial.
Now - What Connor Payton Is Doing Today
Connor Payton is now 21 years old. Not much is made public about his life, but after high school, he attended Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas, where he graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor's degree in Communication and Media Studies. He never followed his dad's footsteps into the NFL.
What’s Sean Payton’s Net Worth?
Sean Payton, who appears in the Home Team movie as Lionel the janitor, has an estimated net worth of over $24 million, which is based on his former role as the head coach of the New Orleans Saints, a contract that reportedly saw Payton earning around $13 million per year. Indeed, this is a conservative estimate as Payton terminated his New Orleans Saints contract even though it was slated to last until 2024. However, the Denver Broncos hired him as their new head coach in 2023, which saw them send a first and second-round pick to the Saints for his rights, and the Broncos acquired his contract.
As for his new contract, this will add a lot of money to Payton's net worth. The $24 million will go up exponentially because Denver is paying him around $18 million a year, making him the second-highest-paid coach in all of American sports, behind only Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots (via Sports Illustrated). The contract is also a five-year deal, which would total out to $90 million by the time it is finished.
How Kevin James Became Sean Payton - In His Own Words
King of Queens and Grownups actor Kevin James stars as the real-life figure Sean Payton in the Home Team real story movie. According to The Ringer, Kevin James was completely unaware of the Bountygate scandal and Payton's involvement, despite being a lifelong Jets fan, until being asked to play Payton in the Home Team movie. Luckily Payton himself was on board with the movie, something that James refused to take part in if he wasn't. Payton and James met up a handful of times in New Orleans before filming the Netflix movie, where the actor got to see the drafting process in real-time at the Saints facility.
According to James, the actor had to wear a hairpiece so he "looked like Sean" and spent time focusing on the coach's mannerisms. For James, the hardest part of Sean Payton's character to nail down was the accent, with James commenting, "The accent was the toughest because it’s all over the place. There’s definitely a little drawl there, but it comes in and out, and it’s just hard to pinpoint where he is exactly from." The physical transformation that Kevin James had to go through to portray Sean Payton in the Home Team movie may not have been all that drastic, but it was hard work nonetheless.