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.
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 to be a hint of Phil Jackson with the New York Knicks about the Payton era: a fabled leader a step out of time. One who has accumulated all the power in the organization with none of the required patience to see through a true rebuild.
Payton has chased sugar highs throughout his time in Denver. But his most important decision came this offseason when he ran off Russell Wilson, sunk the franchise further into salary cap hell, and handpicked Nix as his replacement. Denver drafted Nix 12th overall, far higher than most draft prognosticators (and other teams’ executives) had him slated. Payton’s reasoning for falling for Nix was hazy at best, but he seemed to have a genuine belief that the young quarterback could, over time, become something approaching a facsimile of Drew Brees, who turned Payton’s offensive ideas into something approaching art with the New Orleans Saints.
But the early returns have been grim. Denver lack talent at the skill positions, their offensive line has been crushed and Nix looks lost playing in one of the league’s most complicated offenses.
By now you’ve probably seen the clip of Nix from Denver’s 13-6 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday. The rookie stepped into the huddle to reel off a playcall. Confusion ensued. Denver failed to get the snap off in time and were forced to burn a timeout.
If you missed that one, you probably caught the handful of other times the Broncos had struggles lining up, the team’s receivers glancing to the sideline, eyes bulging, arms raised as they wondered what was going on.
All rookie quarterbacks experience growing pains; things haven’t been rosy for Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears either. NFL defenses are faster and often more sophisticated than those in college. NFL offenses are more expansive, putting a higher burden on quarterbacks who have played in watered-down college schemes.
As the gulf between what is asked of quarterbacks at the pro and college levels has widened, though, teams have become wise about how they can help young quarterbacks develop. Coaches will twist the language of their playbook or mimic plays that a rookie had success with in college to ease their transition to the league. The Bengals imported Joe Burrow’s LSU playbook when they drafted him No 1 overall in 2020 – and added college teammate Ja’Marr Chase to help the process along. Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs allowed Patrick Mahomes to sit during his rookie season. Once Mahomes was handed the starting gig, Reid twisted the language and design of his offense to fit what had worked for his quarterback in college, slowly adding in new elements. It was the same in Green Bay for Jordan Love, who was given three seasons to sit and learn behind Aaron Rodgers.
Nix has been thrown in at the deep end, in an offense with no training wheels. The video of Nix’s struggles in the huddle is indicative of a broader problem with the Broncos: the Sean Payton problem. The coach is infamous for his wordy playcalls. Rookie or not, he drops the motherlode on a quarterback and expects them to pick it up quickly. Wilson, an experienced quarterback, had struggles with the novel-length calls last season, but for a rookie like Nix it has hit wince-inducing territory.
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Nix spent five years in college running a system that relied upon a couple of words or an image being flashed in from the sideline to call plays. In Denver, he’s lining up in the huddle for the first time and being asked to reel off pro football’s equivalent of The Stand before the offense can run a play.
Here’s one example. At Auburn, Nix’s first college stop, Nix ran a play that is a staple at every level of football – a simple play-action pass. Its name: GAS NAKED. When he transferred to Oregon, the coaching staff in Eugene adopted the same language. They already ran the same play, but were happy to adapt to Nix’s language. In Denver, Payton is asking Nix to call things the coach’s way. Suddenly, the same play transforms from ‘Gas Naked’ to a Tolkien-esque ‘KING SNUG RT ON 52 SMASH Z JERK KILL Q-8 Z SPEED SMASH (ALERT PIPE)’.
It’s no wonder the rookie looks disoriented. There are good reasons why NFL coaches prefer elongated play calls – one being there are more plays to learn than in college and they want to make sure everyone knows their exact role. But to not offer a playcalling lifeline to a struggling rookie is self-defeating.
When the Broncos have been able to get the ball off in time, the results have been gnarly. Nothing is more telling than Nix’s numbers throwing down the field. Payton has made a career out of fashioning the best deep passing game in the NFL. Nix is not blessed with the strongest arm – but neither did Brees towards the end of his career – and Payton’s offense is designed to engineer chunk plays for quarterbacks who lack Josh Allen’s flamethrower. Even pushing the ball beyond the sticks has been a challenge so far this season. On throws of 10 yards or more, Nix has thrown twice as many turnover-worthy throws and interceptions as he has completions, according to ProFootballFocus. He has played against two outstanding defenses in the Steelers and Seahawks, but those figures are illustrative of a player who can’t keep up with what is asked of him and is throwing in hope more than expectation.
It’s meaningful that Nix, like Wilson before him, has been at his best when improvising or playing in the two-minute drill, when the playbook slims down and he’s free to escape the constraints of the offense. Payton grew tired of Wilson’s ad-libbing, but it’s the only spot where Nix has shown signs of promise.
Payton’s offense was once the wonder of the league. He was at the cutting edge. In Brees, he had a ruthless and efficient conductor. But those heady days of Saints football are falling further in the rearview mirror. In Denver, he’s populated his staff with buddies from his New Orleans days – eight coaches on the Broncos worked for Payton in New Orleans. And it shows. They have continued to trot out the greatest hits from the past, but appear to have forgotten the frontman, Brees, was crucial to knitting everything together.
If the job of a coach is to put players in the best spot to succeed, then Payton has so far failed. He’s hung his rookie out to dry, bogging Nix down in an offense that’s beyond his capacity – playing on a roster lacking the talent to cover up his flaws. If he is unwilling to adapt, Payton should grant Nix a spell on the sidelines before the confidence is irrevocably knocked out of him.