Over and over again, this crazy coaching carousel spiraled out of control for 35 days, with the Broncos chasing them until CEO Greg Penner finally stepped down, came to his senses, and hired Sean Payton, the most qualified candidate to teach quarterback Russell Wilson how to play again. to drive.
I will stand up and applaud this move by the Broncos as soon as my head stops spinning.
As Penner found out the hard way, it’s much easier to sell 1.5 billion pounds of bananas at Walmart in a year than it is to acquire one solid professional football coach in a month.
But once the dust settles and heads are clear, as DeMeco Ryans makes his wife happy by taking a gig in Houston and Jim Harbaugh continues his never-ending game of footsie with NFL worshipers, two things will become clear at the end of this bumpy , often circuitous route. traveled the insanely wealthy Waltons to hire a veteran coach with a Super Bowl ring to end seven long years of Broncos Country misery.
No. 1: It’s never too late to do the right thing.
No. 2: Payton was the best man for the job from the jump.
So what took so damn long?
I blame Broncos general manager George Paton, the dork who foolishly gave Wilson a $245 million contract extension before the quarterback threw his first bad interception in a Denver uniform.
If the price of acquiring Wilson from Seattle in a trade hadn’t been so high, with a wealth of future draft picks being shipped to the Seahawks, hiring Payton would have been a no-brainer. Instead, the Broncos wandered and wavered, wavering and hesitating when New Orleans suggested that not one, but two first-round draft picks would be needed to release Payton from his contractual obligations to the Saints.
So the Broncos chased Harbaugh all the way to Michigan, courting a diva who would rather be chased than caught. Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief that Harbaugh didn’t say yes-no-maybe to Penner, because those kind of commitment issues are the last of the slack a Broncos franchise needs that’s been hard to keep up lately.
The fling with Ryans, whose star has skyrocketed this year as the hot young coordinator, was much more intriguing, if perhaps even riskier, than the talks with Harbaugh. If the Broncos were willing to take a chance on a former linebacker with no head coaching experience, then Ryans must have had the interview with Denver Brass like no other candidate since Josh McDaniels. (How did that end, by the way?)
So count me as happy with how this twisted story ended. The ransom of two draft picks (a first- and second-rounder) to the Saints in exchange for Payton, a 59-year-old coach who posted a 161-97 record in the NFL, is a fair price to pay.
Essentially, the Broncos traded Bradley Chubb and a player to be named later for Payton, who took a Saints team that finished 3-13 in 2005 to the playoffs during his first season in charge. There is no way Denver could have selected the 29th pick in the first round of this year’s draft with any chance of leading such a turnaround.
Yes, I’ve heard the whining in some corners of the Broncos Country that Payton only won the Super Bowl once in 15 seasons with New Orleans, despite the blessing of Drew Brees as his quarterback. Actually?
Newsflash: Winning the Super Bowl is hard. Mike Tomlin has done it once in 16 seasons with the Steelers; Dan Reeves never won the Lombardi Trophy in Denver, despite being blessed with John Elway as his quarterback.
While there seemed at times little rhyme and no rationale to Penner’s hiring process, leave no doubt that the new ownership group made a big commitment in hiring Payton, who knows it will take more than hugs to build a winning culture.
A year ago, full of false hopes that Nathaniel Hackett could lure quarterback Aaron Rodgers out of Green Bay, the Broncos hired a goofball to coach the team. Payton is a serious football man, with skins on the wall, as our buddy John Fox likes to say.
A quarterback is more important to the championship game than the coach. The Broncos aren’t going anywhere unless they can fix Wilson, and none of the eight candidates interviewed for this gig were as suited to that challenge as Payton.
Unlike Hackett, Payton has the gravitas to command Wilson’s respect rather than serve as his wingman. Wilson has long admired Brees and is now blessed with a coach capable of getting his career back on the road to Canton.
With the contractual obligation given to this coach by owner, Payton has the power to lead the franchise in a new direction, should Denver decide that Wilson really has washed up and must dump him after another rough season.
Since 2017, the Broncos have wasted too many years of our lives hoping and praying that Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio or Hackett could lead the team back to the Championship.
With the hiring of Payton, the Broncos finally invested in a football coach who already knows his way to the top.
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