The Denver Broncos are under new management this year. Sean Payton is taking over as the team’s head coach and has brought a breath of fresh air into the organization. He has preached focusing on what is ahead, not on the past after what was a disastrous 2022 season for the franchise.
The Broncos went 5-12 under Nathaniel Hackett, who was fired after one season on the job. Their offense was largely to blame for the team’s shortcomings as they never got on track despite their blockbuster acquisition of Russell Wilson.
While Payton wants his team to focus on 2023, he took a trip down memory lane in a recent interview with USA Today that was published Thursday. In that interview, he ripped apart Hackett and his staff. In the opinion of Payton, what they did was one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.
Payton didn’t stop at lambasting the job that Hackett did last season with the Broncos. He also took aim at Hackett’s new employer, the New York Jets. New York hired Hackett to be their offensive coordinator, reuniting with Aaron Rodgers, who won two MVPs under Hackett as the OC with the Green Bay Packers.
“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 [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 [Sanders is] there now.’ That team won eight games or whatever. So, listen … just put the work in.”
The Broncos and Jets are set to face off against each other in Week 5 of the season. You can be sure both teams will have that game circled on the calendar after the comments that Payton has made.
While Hackett was ripped apart during the interview, Payton said he wasn’t alone in Wilson’s demise last season. There were a lot of people responsible for Wilson, a nine-time Pro Bowler, having his stats randomly fall off a cliff in what was the least productive season of his career.
“Oh, man, 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 added. “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.”
Payton is looking to reset the culture in Denver and has been very supportive of Wilson this offseason. While he deflected questions about the past all offseason, he let his true feelings be known about the Broncos’ 2022 campaign during the USA Today interview.
Now that it is out, he will assuredly have some follow-up questions to answer from the media. When asked by Dianna Russini of ESPN if he wanted to clarify any comments, Payton said he was just trying to stick up for his players he thought got the short end of the stick.
