Sean Payton interview: Three explosive criticisms made by Broncos Head Coach

Broncos: without a winning campaign since 2016

The Broncos, who haven’t had a winning campaign since 2016, needs a culture change. The franchise with eight Super Bowl appearances in its history became a laughingstock last season as it 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.”

Is Payton going to spark the Broncos to a playoff berth in his first season?

So much of this 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.”

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 in better hands with Payton and coordinator Joe Lombardi, who served for 10 years as Payton’s quarterbacks coach with the Saints. The coach is encouraged by what he saw from the offseason work with Wilson, maintaining, “He’s still got gas in the tank.”

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. 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 (Geroge Paton), the president (Damani Leech) and everybody else who watched it all happen.”

How iguanas survive

A few days ago, 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.”