ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Nathaniel Hackett and the New York Jets have not only been called out – Sean Payton has raised the stakes on the Denver Broncos' Week 5 opponent.
In an explosive article published by USA TODAY and written by NFL reporter Jarrett Bell, Payton didn't hold back in assessing blame on the Broncos' 5-12 season last year on Denver's no-longer head coach Nathaniel Hackett and other team executives.
“Everybody’s got a little stink on their hands,'' Payton said in the article. "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.”
Wow. There's the shot at Hackett, who was fired 15 games and 11 losses into his first and only season as Broncos' head coach last year. Jerry Rosburg was assigned as the interim head coach, and the Broncos went 1-1 in the final two games.
Payton also addressed how he cut down on the media interview for his players and coaches this offseason while criticizing the Jets for opening their doors to the HBO "Hard Knocks" series.
“It doesn’t happen often where an NFL team or organization gets embarrassed,” Payton told USA TODAY. “And that happened here. Part of it was their own fault, relative to spending so much [bleeping] 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 [Washington owner] Dan Snyder put that Dream Team together? I was at the Giants. 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.”
Sources close to Payton say that everything he says has an intentional message he wants to send to his players. In this case, he is not only clearly supporting his quarterback Russell Wilson, he is possibly trying to let his players know losing will no longer be tolerated. It's time to get tough, even mean when it comes to winning.
“I’m going to be [ticked] off if this is not a playoff team,” Payton said in the USA TODAY article.
The Broncos carry six consecutive losing seasons and seven straight years without a playoff appearance into their 2023 season, Payton's first as their head coach. The worst of this unseemly stretch when Wilson – who had been a top 10-rated quarterback in nine of his previous 10 seasons with the Seattle Seahawks – played well below standards in his first year with the Broncos, finishing with the 27th-best ranking.
Much was made of Wilson having his own office upstairs and personal coaches who attended practice and had access inside the team facility during Hackett's stay. Payton criticized not only the head coach for Wilson's special privileges, but team executives.
“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," he said. "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.”
It should be noted that Rosburg, in one of his first moves as interim head coach, asked Wilson to no longer use his office upstairs and to no longer have his coaches around the building. Wilson complied. There was no Russell Wilson office or personal coaches for the final two weeks of the 2022 season.
“That all ended when I took over,'' Rosburg said this week in an interview with 9NEWS. "I never had more respect for Russell. He showed great humility, which is a great characteristic to have. At that point in time things had not gone well, obviously. The coach had just got fired, the team was in turmoil as evidenced by the Christmas Day performance.
"After all that, I asked Russell Wilson to make a sacrifice. And he did it. At that point in time, things shifted in my view. You saw teammates come to his support publicly. They saw what Russell was doing, trying to help them, trying to help the team. And he was putting the team ahead of his own comfort, perhaps. Things that he knew worked. And they worked for him in the past. His record is his record. It’s impressive. He had done this previously and they worked for him.
"I asked him to surrender that and to his credit, to his vast credit, he did that for all those around him and the organization. So people can criticize and hold marks against him for whatever it was that set up – that was done in good faith by everyone involved.
"The structure that was there was set up for success. That’s what Russell and those that made those decisions, that’s why they did it. This is the best way we can operate. This is how we can win. But it wasn’t working. Whatever part of that was. But it was not without good faith. He was trying to do his very best.
"But it wasn’t working. And he was the one who had the most to surrender. And he humbled himself and he played well those last two games. His teammates came to his aid. I think that says a lot about the character of Russell Wilson, and he’s one of the other reasons I think they’re going to have a great season.”
The Broncos went 1-1 in their final two games, losing to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Kansas City Chiefs, 27-24 and beating the playoff-bound Los Angeles Chargers, who played their starters, 31-28.
Wilson in his final two games posted a 96.5 QB rating that would have ranked 9th in the league if projected out over 17 games. He had an 82.6 rating through his previous 13 games played, which would have played out to the 29th ranking.
The Broncos play the Jets on Sunday afternoon, Oct. 8 at Empower Field at Mile High. Payton vs. Hackett -- whose quarterback will be Aaron Rodgers, not Wilson.
It will be a game that may say more about where to lay the bulk of blame for the Broncos' disappointing 2022 season.
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