End-of-game scenarios were often a disaster for the Denver Broncos last season. Rookie head coach Nathaniel Hackett mishandled clock management, late-game decisions and personnel more than once last year.
Denver fired Hackett with two games remaining last season and they replaced him with experienced head coach Sean Payton this offseason. If the Broncos have any more late-game blunders this season, it won’t be because of a lack of preparation.
“[We have] a board where there’s 43 things that are unique end of game, end of half, and sometimes middle of the game situations that may come up once every four weeks — maybe once every two years,” Payton said on June 8. “We begin teaching those, and not just to those involved. In a perfect world, the whole bench is going to know what to expect at the end of the game in a certain situation. We spent all of the walkthrough — you guys saw it — on about eight different situations.
“[During] training camp on each day, we will take two [situations] and we will review [them]. They have to know those cold, and they have to know what we’re thinking so that when they come up, we can execute. If you don’t address one because it doesn’t come up until every two years, then you’re going to be faced with it, and no one’s going to know what to do. It’s really just trying to get really specific with the details of certain game situations that actually happen. We have video of it, and we have statistics of it. What’s the strategy when it happens?”
Payton went on to say the team will practice a few of the situations each week during the season, helping keep them fresh in players’ minds.
“We’re not going to cover 42 a week, but we’re going to repeat situations so that when they come up in the game, there’s clear and calm thought and everyone’s on the same page,” Payton said.
That should lead to a big improvement from last year.
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