Sean Payton is molding the Denver Broncos into a winning team.
Slowly but surely, Denver is going from one of the worst teams in the NFL to a mediocre team.
And it may not sound like something to celebrate, but it is.
Slowly, steadily Sean Payton is molding Denver Broncos into a winning team
Two years ago, the Broncos were brutally bad. They finished the year 5-12, dead last in the AFC West. And they managed to score only 287 points on offense, their lowest output since 1992. The season 30 years ago was bad enough to end Dan Reeves’ Broncos coaching career. And in 2022, Nathaniel Hackett’s NFL-worst offense ended his head coaching stint, too.
In stepped Payton, and immediately things improved.
Keep in mind, the 2023 Denver Broncos weren’t really Sean Payton’s team. It was a group he inherited and did his best with for the time being.
He didn’t love Russell Wilson, but got the most out of him possible. After starting out 1-5, the Broncos went on an astonishing 5-game win streak and fell a few games short of making the playoffs. The offense was improved, scored 357 total points, the most since the Super Bowl 50 team.
But this offseason is when Payton took the reins of the Broncos.
He cut Wilson loose, even while eating the largest dead cap penalty in NFL history. He and GM George Paton drafted Bo Nix to play quarterback, then cut multiple veterans like Justin Simmons and Tim Patrick. Those moves were unpopular with the fan base, but they were apparently part of the plan.
Sean Payton started molding the Denver Broncos into a winning team by starting from scratch. They’re the third-youngest team in the league this year, and many are getting first-hand experience for the first time.
That showed in the first few weeks, as Nix turned the ball over four times. But Payton rallied his team to beat a good Tampa Bay Buccaneers squad and the bad Jets, both on the road. It’s a two-game trip that could define the season and remind the team what they can do when they set their minds to it.
The Broncos then beat down the Raiders with ease, fell to what looks like a strong Chargers team before smacking the stumbling Saints.
Denver is an inconsistent team. Fans will have to ride the Bo-ller coaster all year long.
And that’s the stage of the rebuilding process this team currently is.
Teams must take small steps on the way to championships
The NFL is such a competitive, tough league that teams can’t skip steps on their way to being great.
For the Broncos, the first step was learning how to win.
Imagine the NFL in three tiers of teams. There are bad teams, mediocre teams, and great teams. That’s the order of growth.
The Broncos were bad for seven seasons, but there’s hope they’re improving to the next category. Mediocre teams take care of business against bad teams. And they sometimes beat better teams.
The way Denver destroyed the Raiders and the Saints, two bad teams, and knocked off a better team in the Bucs is evidence the Broncos are on the edge of being average. Decent. Middle-of-the-road.
And while it doesn’t sound sexy, it’s a hell of a lot better than being awful.
At 4-3, the Broncos have another winnable game next week against the pitiful Panthers. Now that Sean Payton is molding the into a winner, we can say: Denver should beat Carolina at 1-5.
They face multiple great teams down the stretch. Like the Ravens in Baltimore, the Chiefs twice, and the Chargers are making a case to be in that category too.
If things go right for the Broncos, and they beat the other bad teams, they’ll likely finish right around .500 for a second straight season.
That’s better than most folks expected, and it’s squarely in mediocre territory.
What Payton is doing now is setting this team up to take the next step, into greatness, soon. Possibly in 2025, but more likely in a few years from now.
But hey, unremarkable teams make the playoffs every year. And with Payton at the helm, it seems like a question of “when” not “if.”