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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – Not one minute had passed from the moment Sean Payton welcomed a curious visitor into his office when the new Denver Broncos coach delivered a striking message.
“Can I say this to you?” Payton said, shuffling stuff on his desk.
Of course, you can. Let it rip.
“I’m going to be pissed off if this is not a playoff team,” Payton told USA TODAY Sports.
So there. A flag planted. For Year 1. Never mind that he’s signed up in a division ruled by Patrick Mahomes and the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. Payton, 59, back from a one-year sabbatical from coaching, is the same upbeat, cocksure soul who generated so much success, including a Super Bowl crown, during 15 seasons with the New Orleans Saints.
Speak his mind? And expectations, too. Pressure be damned.
Payton remembers how quickly things came together when he took over the Saints in 2006 and guided the team to a division title in his first season.
“Winning,” he said softly. “It’s the salve for the whole organization. Makes everyone feel better.”
As Broncos veterans reported to training camp and ramped up for the first full-scale practice on Friday, Payton was clearly in the mood to talk standards and messages while aiming to prove that he can win big again in a different time and place.
“Hey, we are going to be on time,” he said. “We’re going to learn how rewarding it is to play for each other, compete for each other, rather than for ourselves. And I expect us to think playoffs.”
The Broncos, who haven’t had a winning campaign since 2016, surely need this culture change. The franchise with eight Super Bowl appearances in its history (and now six coaches in 10 years) became a laughingstock last season as it paired rookie coach Nathaniel Hackett (who lasted 15 games) with veteran quarterback Russell Wilson and produced an unmitigated disaster underscored by the NFL’s worst offense.
“It doesn’t happen often where an NFL team or organization gets embarrassed,” Payton said. “And that happened here. Part of it was their own fault, relative to spending so much (expletive) time trying to win the offseason – the PR, the pomp and circumstance, marching people around and all this stuff.
“We’re not doing any of that. The Jets did that this year. You watch. ‘Hard Knocks,’ all of it. I can see it coming. Remember when (former Washington owner) Dan Snyder put that Dream Team together? I was at the Giants (in 2000). I was a young coach. I thought, ‘How are we going to compete with them? Deion’s (Sanders) there now.’ That team won eight games or whatever. So, listen…just put the work in.”
The hunch here is that Payton could care less about making the Jets’ – or anybody’s – bulletin board.
There is enough scrutiny already attached. If Payton is going to spark the Broncos to a playoff berth in his first season, so much seemingly depends on a revived Wilson, who is coming off the worst season of his career. While Denver scored an NFL-low 16.9 points per game, Wilson posted career lows for TD passes (16) and passer rating (84.4). He also drew heat for faulty mechanics that contributed to some of the career-high 55 sacks he endured behind a suspect O-line.
“Man, we ran that kid through the car wash a hundred times now,” Payton said of Wilson and questions of how this coach-quarterback dynamic will play out. “But that’s a storyline, though. How is this going to look? How’s it going to work? You know what? We’re fixing to find out. As Bill would say.”
Payton chuckled, realizing that he echoed his mentor, Bill Parcells.
In any event, there may be no better barometer for Denver’s chances than Wilson, who signed a five-year, $245 million extension last year before taking a single snap in a Broncos uniform. Sure, it’s a team sport, and the Broncos have a solid defense that might be spectacular if it can generate a consistent pass rush. But quarterbacks are paid the big bucks for a reason. And big-money coaches – Payton was lured to Denver as the biggest prize during the coaching hiring cycle, commanding a five-year contract reportedly worth roughly $18 million per year – are paid to figure out quarterbacks.
What happened last year with Wilson?
“Oh, man,” Payton began. “There’s so much dirt around that. There’s 20 dirty hands, for what was allowed, tolerated in the fricking training rooms, the meeting rooms. The offense. I don’t know Hackett. A lot of people had dirt on their hands. It wasn’t just Russell. He didn’t just flip. He still has it. This B.S. that he hit a wall? Shoot, they couldn’t get a play in. They were 29th in the league in pre-snap penalties on both sides of the ball.”
Wilson, 34, is undoubtedly in better hands with Payton and coordinator Joe Lombardi, who served for 10 years as Payton’s quarterbacks coach with the Saints. And it’s virtually a given that he will get a boost from an overhauled offensive line, which includes the huge free agency investments made in right tackle Mike McGlinchey and left guard Ben Powers.
Payton is encouraged by what he saw from the offseason work with Wilson, maintaining, “He’s still got gas in the tank.”
Yet another layer of the Wilson saga involved the kid-glove handling he received from Hackett, which fueled much speculation and criticism as the season (which ended at 5-12) spiraled out of control. Wilson, a 12th-year pro, has employed a support staff for years that includes a personal athletic trainer, a strength and conditioning coach and massage therapist. Yet boundaries were apparently blurred by the presence of Wilson’s personal quarterback coach, Jake Heaps.
Not anymore. When Payton was hired in February, he made it clear that none of Wilson’s team would have access to the team’s facility.
“That wasn’t his fault,” Payton said of Wilson. “That was the parents who allowed it. That’s not an incrimination on him, but an incrimination on the head coach, the GM (George Paton), the president (Damani Leech) and everybody else who watched it all happen.
“Now, a quarterback having an office and a place to watch film is normal. But all those things get magnified when you’re losing. And that other stuff, I’ve never heard of it. We’re not doing that.”
Yes, the culture has changed with a new sheriff in town. It will be reflected, too, in the pace and tone of training camp. Hackett wouldn’t play starters in preseason games and even kept them out of one-on-one drills in practices in an apparent effort for preservation.
Under Payton – who declares that they are preparing to play “tackle football” – it will be old-school intense…up to the point allowed by CBA rules. Soft is out.
“Everything I heard about last season, we’re doing the opposite,” Payton said.
Of course, Payton has his ways of expressing such to his team. Like his mentor, Parcells, he is hardly short of ways of getting a message across.
During the spring, Payton had a video made that hammered home the point that the 2022 season was over and done with. The video included the image of some team equipment staff members riding off in the orange, 2022 Ford Bronco (with the rearview and side mirrors removed) that had been positioned near the practice field. Also, a scene was edited in from the movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” where John Candy’s character drove the wrong way on a freeway. And the video included a shot of a truck driving off a cliff.
Maybe there’s a part of Payton that wants to be a Hollywood film producer.
“That was a message,” Payton said. “They can only beat the (expletive) out of you so much. But everybody’s got a little stink on their hands. It’s not just Russell. It was a (poor) offensive line. It might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL. That’s how bad it was.”
Fast-forward to now. On the day the veterans reported, Payton had his assistant, Paul Kelly, queue up a short nature documentary that showed baby iguanas under attack from running snakes immediately after they hatched. The video captures how some of the iguanas survived by dashing to an oceanside cliff. Others were eaten by snakes.
Payton pondered showing what he called a “creepy video” to hammer home a point to his players.
“When these baby iguanas are hatched, they pop their heads out of the sand and they’ve got to get to the cliffs,” he said. “There are runner snakes all around, and they feed off the babies. So, the message is, ‘We’ve got to hit the ground running. There’s a sense of urgency. Let’s hit the ground running.’ ”
Which might go a long way toward Payton’s ASAP vision of taking the Broncos to the playoffs.
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