During his end-of-season press conference on Tuesday, Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton said the team would begin evaluating players (and coaches) next week.
With the evaluation still pending, Payton would not answer questions about the futures of certain players or the job security of select coaches.
“It’s only our second day since Sunday,” Payton said. “I know there will be a number of questions about staff, but we haven’t gotten into those discussions yet, relative to any personnel, player-wise or coach for that matter. That’s kind of where we are at, but we’ll have the chance to go through all of that pretty thoroughly.”
Payton, general manager George Paton and team owner/CEO Greg Penner will meet next week before making any big decisions on the roster or staff. Consequently, Payton was unwilling to entertain questions about that topic during his end-of-season presser.
“Like I said, the tough part of this presser is always the questions are good questions, but the cart is ahead of the horse,” Payton said. “We’ve got the next two weeks. I’ll be spending time with George, Greg, our coordinators and all that stuff. We’ll look closely, just as we do with our own roster, at what we’re doing. Again, it’s too early today to even get into any discussions.”
The coach that faced the most scrutiny in 2023 was defensive coordinator Vance Joseph. Denver’s defense had an historically bad start to the year before bouncing back in the second half of the season. The future of Joseph — and every other coach on Payton’s staff — is apparently still undecided.