Sheesh. Sean Payton knows he left the New Orleans Saints and walked into a mess, telling USA TODAY Sports’ Jarrett Bell that the 2022 Denver Broncos “might have been one of the worst coaching jobs in the history of the NFL. That’s how bad it was.”
Payton took aim at ex-Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett and his staff in a lengthy interview, pointing to the number of areas in which Denver fell flat after stunning the NFL world in a blockbuster trade for quarterback Russell Wilson. The team Payton inherited ranked last in points scored, and he knows it’ll take a lot of hard work to clean it up.
“Oh, man,” Payton continued, “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.”
For his sake, hopefully the decision to quit on the Saints, take a year off, and start fresh in a new organization pays off for Payton. He’s set the expectation for a playoffs-or-bust mentality, which will be tough in a division full of playoff teams and Super Bowl contenders. If nothing else, he’ll have plenty of time to get things in order in Denver before he returns to the Caesars Superdome for a game in 2024.
