There’s no sugarcoating it: the 2022 Denver Broncos were an irrevocable mess. At the center of their failures in a 5-12 campaign was Russell Wilson. After Denver brought Wilson to Colorado in a blockbuster trade, the veteran quarterback enjoyed the worst and least efficient season of his career by far. In fact, at a certain point late in the year, Wilson had more bathrooms in his Denver area home than touchdown passes.
To try and salvage what they can from Wilson, the Broncos hired the experienced Sean Payton. As a Super Bowl-winning coach, Payton predictably wasted no time putting his foot down with his signal caller. And per a report from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham, Payton was very comfortable explaining Denver’s disaster of a 2022 with Wilson at the helm.
How did he do it? He used footage of a Ford Bronco driving off a cliff to describe Denver’s foibles last fall. Then, he told Wilson to cut out all the superfluous stuff surrounding his brand. Yeah, this was as blunt as it gets.
“Payton is the program, everything flowing out of his fierce ingenuity and ethic. He showed the team a video of a 2022 Ford Bronco driving off a cliff, letting players know last year is over. He told Wilson that to salvage his career he needed to focus less on Russell Inc. “Will you [expletive] stop kissing all the babies?” he said. “You’re not running for public office.”
The Broncos not only needed a talent injection this offseason, they needed a course correction. They needed a coach like Payton with an established backlog of turning organizations around. Based on these kinds of sentiments, Payton is already living up to that billing.