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Sean Payton’s Denver Broncos have lost their two opening games of the season. Photograph: John Froschauer/AP
It was only last season that Sean Payton rocked up in Denver and set a blowtorch to everything that came before, labelling Nathaniel Hackett’s spell in charge of the Broncos one of “the worst coaching jobs” in NFL history. It would be nice to know where he thinks his first two games of this season stack up in the rankings.
The Broncos have started the season 0-2. Push the timeline back further and Denver have only won two of their last eight games, with both wins coming over a team quarterbacked by Easton Stick. Through two weeks this season, the Broncos’ offense has laid an egg in four out of eight quarters. Payton, once at the vanguard of offensive football, looks someone out of ideas – or at least out of time. His offense is stuck in 2013, and is led by a rookie quarterback, Bo Nix, who looks in over his head. The advanced metrics this season put Denver’s offense ahead of only the awful Carolina Panthers, a team who benched their quarterback this week, in part, because they are worried he has trouble seeing over the line of scrimmage.
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Payton seems as befuddled as anyone by Denver’s ineptitude. “We have to start really looking at who we are asking to do what,” he said on Sunday. “What scheme fits our players? What scheme fits our quarterback?”
You would hope a coach would have the answers to those questions before they chucked an underbaked rookie out against two of the best defenses in the league.
At first blush, hiring Payton made sense. He was a decorated coach who would bring instant credibility to an organization that had become a laughing stock. The Broncos had a new ownership group, and they were happy to fork over $18m a year and a couple of draft picks to land a coach with Super Bowl pedigree. But there is starting…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/sean-payton-stumbling-broncos-innovative-125619574.html
Author : The Guardian
Publish date : 2024-09-19 12:56:19
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