Sean Payton is a Super Bowl–winning coach and, as of last year, also something of a TV analyst. But now we can confirm that he, too, is a performer.
This is true of a lot of people in leadership positions. For the portions of George Patton IV’s biography I remained awake for on Audible, it was said he enjoyed the costume of a military man, of creating and donning a persona.
I won’t give Payton that much credit, though I do think the intent behind his burial of former Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett on Thursday was obvious.
Payton: © Ron Chenoy | 2023 Feb 6 USA TODAY; Wilson: © Denny Medley | 2023 Jan 1 USA TODAY
Payton told USA Today this week that the 2022 Broncos was “one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL” and added that there were multiple “dirty hands” in the downfall of Russell Wilson and, ultimately, Denver’s substandard season. He offered passive criticisms of the Broncos for the way they handled players in myriad ways, such as Hackett’s efforts to manage players’ workloads. In case you’re forgetting, Wilson played like a shell of himself in ’22. Some people blamed the quarterback, especially during the clips where open receivers were waving their arms as if they were landing an airplane. The Broncos’ new ownership structure sided with the general manager who gave up a massive haul to pry Wilson away from the Seahawks and fired Hackett after just one season.
Lost in most folks’ interpretations of Payton’s words, to me, was the intent in pacifying and trying to strengthen the resolve of his embattled quarterback, the desire to shift the blame off Wilson once and for all and establish a clean slate for a player who may desperately need it. While Payton deserves credit for saying what was in his heart on the record, dragging a coach through the mud in an effort to buoy the player you hope will save your first season feels like a low blow (perhaps he forgot for a moment that he was no longer on America’s Pregame). He also took a shot at the Jets for hosting Hard Knocks, even as the franchise resisted the documentary series like the onset of a stomach bug.
The comments also place a massive target on Payton’s back heading into his first season, especially considering how quickly into his tenure the Broncos snapped up one of the most promising backup quarterbacks on the market in Jarrett Stidham. Does he believe what he’s saying, or is this just your standard, scattershot attempt at building a narrative to motivate a roster and a quarterback who weren’t that good to begin with? This feels a bit like a politician talking to a large crowd of people uninterested in checking the facts.
Also, if what happened to the Broncos last year was so horrendous, why doesn’t Payton speak in specifics, instead of twisting openly reported knowledge about Hackett’s tenure and his decisions on how to run the team? What, exactly, was so bad? Why couldn’t the Broncos get plays in? He’s already halfway there. Why not deliver the goods (if any truly exist)?
If Payton doesn’t resurrect Wilson, is he, too, committing what he’d consider coaching malpractice? If he doesn’t make the playoffs, if the team and the offense still suffer from mishaps before the snap, does he correct the record? If Payton benches Wilson, which would have been almost impossible for Hackett to do, is he asked to account for his reasoning under the same magnifying lens? Does a reporter get invited back for a self-flogging?
After talking tough on Wilson’s entourage being allowed in the building last year, it was time to build the foundation of a relationship at the expense of a coach who was willing to take the blame for how everything went in Denver last season.
Bob Donnan/USA Today network
Maybe (clearly) Payton enjoys the attention. There are few other reasons to invite a reporter into your office to tape-record a verbal execution. The football community is a politically Machiavellian one, although we rarely see coaches take shots at one another publicly if there’s no prior animus, or if a player’s health and safety isn’t on the line.
I don’t think many of us are going to complain about the erasure of a slow news day, but I do question the need to take the easy way out and eviscerate Hackett as the team started training camp. If the franchise really needed to move on this badly, why not show them how it’s done? What do we normally call the person who makes fun of the person who always gets made fun of in an effort to fit in?
The article ended by talking about Payton showing his players a video of some baby reptiles escaping from snakes. While it’s always dangerous to try to interpret a coach’s metaphors, he believes the Broncos are the baby reptiles, and the snakes are the entrapments of prior failure and distraction. To me, he doesn’t really come off as the protagonist, though. This feels like a snake move, through and through.
