When a new coach takes over after someone was fired, they usually take a diplomatic approach to how they’re going to change things in order to get better. Rarely will a coach air out another member of the fraternity directly, instead focusing on how they’re going to shift the team’s culture and try to do things a bit differently in order to get more out of the team.
And then there’s Sean Payton.
Payton is taking over in Denver this year for Nathaniel Hackett, who was very clearly in over his head in his lone season with the Broncos. There was the infamous decision to play for a 64-yard field goal in the very first game of the season, which ensured everyone focused on poor game management choices for the rest of the year. His tenure ended with a 51-14 loss to an extremely mediocre Rams team, and while you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that would praise his efforts in Denver, not many expected Payton to take out the torch on him at the start of camp.
Jarrett Bell of USA Today spoke with Payton this week and got the new Broncos coach’s full, unfiltered take on the disaster that was last year, with Payton ripping Hackett and the entire staff, calling it “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.”
“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.”
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“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.”
Payton also made clear he expects this Broncos team to be a playoff team, despite being in the same division as the Chiefs and Chargers, as he is not shy about his feelings that the presence of a coherent coaching staff can right the wrongs of last season. It’s pretty wild to hear a coach talk like this about another coach, but he’s also just saying what pretty much everyone who watched a lot of the Broncos last year did. Now, we’ll find out if Russell Wilson’s woes really were just coaching and the lack of a cohesive system, or if he’s as cooked as he looked a year ago. If the latter is true, it won’t matter how much better the team culture is under Payton, but he’s clearly hitching his wagon to Russ and expecting a bounce back in the form of a playoff berth.
