Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson has taken a beating in the media for how badly he performed in his first season under center at Empower Field at Mile High.
While Wilson shares plenty of the blame, new head coach Sean Payton wants everyone to know, the former Seattle Seahawks legend isn’t the only one at fault for the Broncos ugly 5-11 2022 season.
In an interview with USA Today, Payton the one-time Super Bowl-winning coach with the New Orleans Saints, said that former head coach Nathaniel Hackett and staff didn’t do Russ and the team as a whole any favors from a coaching standpoint.
In fact, Payton said Hackett and staff executed “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL.”
He also said there were “20 dirty hands” around Russ, who threw a career-low 16 touchdowns but was sacked a league-leading 55 times.
Payton Says His Staff Is Doing The Opposite Of 2022
A pretty brash Payton, as he known-to-be, told the outlet this.
“Everything I heard about last season, we’re doing the opposite.”
Payton is probably speaking of last year’s setup where Hackett pretty much said Wilson was designing the offense. That won’t happen with Payton in control. While he’ll respect Wilson’s input, the base of the offense will be his and the final input will come from Payton.
Wilson will be asked to run the offense with precision and quick decision-making, Payton won’t want him pulling the Houdini act he often pulled in Seattle. He also ruled out Wilson having his personal QB coach and his other players‘ personal staff employees in the team’s facility, something he had last year.
Payton Takes Shot At Jets And Hackett
While talking about how the Broncos handled things last offseason, Payton referenced what the Jets have done this offseason.
“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,” Payton continued. “You watch. ‘Hard Knocks,’ all of it. I can see it coming. Remember when former Washington owner Daniel Snyder put that Dream Team together in 2000? I was at the Giants in 2000, I was a young coach. I thought how are we gonna compete with them? Deion Sanders is there now. That team won eight games or whatever. So, listen … just put the work in.”
Shots fired at Hackett and the Jets, who’s head coach Robert Saleh who says “haters gon’ hate,” and he and his Jets team will see Payton and the Broncos on Oct. 8.
