Sean Payton has delivered a scathing review of the Denver Broncos ahead of next season, blaming everyone but Russell Wilson for last season’s failures.
Speaking in a no-holds-barred interview with Jarrett Bell of USA Today, the new Broncos head coach criticized the job Nathaniel Hackett did with the team in 2022, also lashing out at the current team president and general manager for their coddling of Wilson, though he refused to attach much responsibility to the quarterback.
“That wasn’t (Wilson’s) fault,” he said of the preferential treatment given to the QB. “That was the parents who allowed it. That’s not an incrimination on him, but an incrimination on the head coach, the GM [George Paton], the president [Damani Leech] and everybody else who watched it all happen.”
This is all pretty strange given that the Broncos are the ones paying Payton’s salary, while he hasn’t coached a game yet. If anything, he’s put himself under a lot more pressure going into 2023/24.
Of course, it would be a lot easier to blame Wilson. That’s probably why everyone else has done it. But Payton has actually defended the QB and there could be merit to his argument. After all, Russell Wilson is a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who has been to the Pro Bowl on nine occasions. Players cut from their cloth don’t suddenly forget how to throw a football.
“Oh, man,” Payton was also quoted as saying. “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.”
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We can’t be sure why Payton unloaded on Bell in such a manner, but he had better turn things around quickly in Denver now that he’s said what he said.
