Sean Payton On 2022 Broncos: One Of Worst Coaching Jobs In History Of NFL

Broncos HC Sean Payton made it clear that they’re moving in an entirely new direction as an organization from the prior coaching staff under HC Nathaniel Hackett. 

“Everything I heard about last season, we’re doing the opposite,” Payton tells Jarrett Bell of USA Today. 

Payton went as far as to say that Hackett had performed “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.”

“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 criticized the team’s approach last year for “trying to win the offseason.”

“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 Broncos fired Hackett midseason, but QB Russell Wilson has come under his share of the blame for how poorly things went last year. According to Payton, everyone has dirt on their hands. 

“Oh, man,” Payton said. “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.”

“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, the president 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.”

Even with the amount of work that needs to be done in Denver to right the ship, Payton believes they can be a playoff team in 2023. 

“I’m going to be pissed off if this is not a playoff team,” Payton said.